I’m taking a rare moment to not offer a suggestion, not offer a recommendation, but to grouse.
I’ve been watching the cable channel Turner Classic Movies (TCM, as it’s more colloquially known as) for decades. For those with modern cable packages, it may shock you to learn that when I first moved to Chicago as a older teen, it was included in the most basic cable package I could afford. I’d constantly watch it, and still do. It is on practically 24/7 in our household. I attended one of the handful of TCM nationwide screening events — it featured an in-person one-on-one interview with original TCM host Robert Osborne (R.I.P) and Jane Powell (R.I.P.). I’ve glowed while attending the TCM Fest in Los Angeles. I’d been attending Noir City film events hosted by Eddie Muller for years before he was brought in to program Noir Alley. I have so many TCM enamel pins. (So many!)
TCM has always been a cultural staple for me, letting me revisit beloved films as well as giving context and informing me as to works I overlooked in the past.
To say TCM has undergone a transformation recently would be an understatement.
(I will note: there are a lot of old-school TCM viewers who constantly complain whenever anything newer than from the 1950s is played. I am not one of them. Classics are classics, no matter the time period. The 90s were thirty years ago, and those films deserve the same recognition as anything from the 30s. Also? TCM still mostly plays films from the 30s-60s. Anything later — or even earlier! — is rare.)
Several years ago, they went under a significant redesign, one that was meant to modernize the network and the brand. It no longer has a cozy patina but instead all of the bumpers are all high-contrast, black backgrounds and neon-icons, laid upon overly exuberant 30-second musical quips. Given that TCM has a surprisingly high number of youthful viewers, that’s not surprising and, while I found it slightly too bright and boisterous, it was immaculately designed and I had no problem rolling with it.
Within the past year, however, I’ve found the channel to be lackluster. While, yes, TCM traffics in replaying old-favorites, they’ve taken to replaying them within a few days of each other which is tiresome and antithetical to the brand. Warner Bros. killed off TCM Underground, the 15+ year-old cult block that ran late-night on Fridays, programmed by the brilliant Millie De Chirico. Cult films are what drive film as a medium forward and youths need an informed voice to learn from. Warner Bros. fired practically everyone who made TCM into the singular filmic channel that people love. (Thanks to folks like Spielberg and Scorsese, they did re-hire a few of the higher-ups, but certainly not enough.)
I’ll also note that I am still very upset at how they treated their first woman host, Tiffany Vasquez, who was removed from TCM relatively quickly. Was she a bit awkward out of the gate? Sure, but who wouldn’t be?! She had an energy and verve and I firmly believe she would have been a great host if she were given some time to settle into the role.
While I do have issues with how they’ve treated their hosts, I do want to extoll the current hosts:
Ben Mankiewicz is so winsome and gregarious but also very generous.
Dave Karger is the musical/theatre nerd you want in your corner.
Alicia Malone is perhaps the least visually static host in televisual history — she changes looks and hair colors every few weeks — and I love that as well as her insight.
Eddie Muller, well, I already talked about him but I will note that I have met him. He loves to talk just as much as he does on Noir Alley and for as many words as he spills in Noir Alley segments? I know he has at least three times more he’s champing at the bit to spit out.
Last, but definitely not least, motherfucking Chicago’s own Jacqueline Stewart, doing the work to call everyone’s attention to silent films and under-appreciated Black cinema.
I also love a lot of the production design and cinematography updates of the intro/outro segments! Granted, a few of them — specifically the very robotic camera movements for intros/extros — were clearly done because of the pandemic, however they were much needed. The prior efforts had the sheen of 90s video.
However, the channel has become noisier, glossier, and has lost most of its idiosyncrasy. It feels more like AMC in the days before MAD MEN and THE WALKING DEAD, like they’re just tossing on whatever they have available without any sense of theme or engagement. The highly stylized and tautly edited commercials advertising the monthly features that were unlike anything else on TV are no longer. My wife and I would routinely dissect those montages, and I’d break down each featured film for her because I have that vocabulary. That doesn’t happen now.
I realize that brands need to keep up with the times, but TCM was a stalwart. It was reliable and cozy. It wasn’t just a cable channel; it was more like a televisual friend that you could always depend on. That’s no longer the case.
I’ll note that the cheap TCM subscription I had many, many moons ago no longer exists. Comcast/Xfinity realized pretty swiftly that TCM subscribers will do anything to keep their channel, and they had the audacity to move it to the most expensive package, their upper-tier sports package — which is fucking ridiculous because TCM viewers? Not known for loving sports! But they’ll force film fans to subsidize the outrageous prices to broadcast sports! — and, unlike other cable channels, you cannot pay for it à la carte. (I will note: some TCM offerings are available via Max and the streaming Criterion Channel.)
For the first time ever, I’m thinking of ditching TCM. Because I’m a big film nerd, I own a lot of what they already play, but I love playing a personal game where I walk through the living room and glance at the TV and try to guess the film playing. (I’m pretty good at that game, if I do say so myself!) However, nowadays, TCM just makes me long for the days of old, which is depressing, even if it makes me sound like a curmudgeon.
It’s disheartening. As you can clearly read, I’ve loved TCM, but it’s become a shadow of itself, as so much of everything around me nowadays. If there’s anything I’ve learned over the years? When you feel that tug where you’re being taken advantage of, when you aren’t quite getting what you want out of an exchange? Fucking move on and don’t look back.
I just never expected I’d have to do that with TCM.
