Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has so far mostly been known for slashing staff and projects along with gutting divisions at the media corporate giant in an effort to cut costs.
Though the majority of those cuts are behind the company now, there’s still anxiety about certain elements of the Warner Bros. Discovery empire and whether they’ll undergo more financial and manpower curtailing in the near future.
One division though seems to be safe, one that Zaslav has been a champion of for years, is Turner Classic Movies (TCM). The cable channel’s programming has been running since 1994 and consists mainly of classic theatrically released feature films from the Turner Entertainment film library.
The cabler’s primetime host Ben Mankiewicz, who has been in that job for two decades, tells EW that they’re safe:
“When [Zaslav] says that they value what we do and that we’re going to be continuing what we do in the foreseeable future, I believe him. And he’s ready. He is connected in this town, and he’s prepared to use that muscle to make sure this town turns out to support us.
Zaslav [has] talked about the value of curation. He gets what we do. He’s not a guy who thinks, ‘Let’s just show the movies.’ He gets what TCM does and why it’s important…There’s such a logical connection between this defining studio in the history of Hollywood and the classic channel to tell that story. This is a promising point in TCM’s development and not a cause for alarm.”
Warner Bros. Picture is set to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2023, and TCM will be the ‘centerpiece’ for the programming of tributes both at the annual TCM Film Festival and in on-air segments.