“We have a chance to make the power of curation much louder on a streaming service than some of our competitors, who compete on volume and algorithm,” he said. “TV by the ton is not that great. TV that’s carefully picked for me, by somebody I really trust, that feels good all day long.”
Ascheim said that expanding the channel’s streaming presence was not a sign that TCM was giving up on traditional cable TV or its own underlying values.
“There’s no intention to turn TCM into Cinemax, just like a bunch of movies from the current moment,” he said. “As long as linear is there, we’ll be there with pride.”
Still, even the suggestion of changes at TCM is enough to prompt skepticism from its viewers. When a short teaser video was posted to Twitter last week, showing Mankiewicz painting his own set, it elicited a series of quizzical comments. Sam Adams, a senior editor at Slate, wrote in a tweet: “assuming this means a change to ‘HBO Classic’ or some such”
But TCM staffers said this kind of second-guessing was all part of the process. Mankiewicz said he experienced a similar scrutiny when he joined TCM in 2003 as an ongoing host — a role that, up until that time, had been held only by the network’s signature personality, Robert Osborne.
“For not a month or two months but for years, there was a feeling of, Who the hell’s this guy?” Mankiewicz recalled. “Only after two or three years, they were like, This guy talks about the movies, it’s OK, we’re all right.”
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/arts/television/turner-classic-movies.html
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