TCM 2017, a Year of Changes?

The year 2017 saw a lot of changes on our favorite film network. Of course, the biggest and most far-reaching was the passing of Robert Osborne in March. Osborne was not just the face and voice of TCM, but its heart and soul as well. While it was sad news for any classic movie fan, I can't say that it was too much of a shock to me. He had been scaling back his appearances on the network for years and cancelled his appearances at the TCM Classic Film Festival (TCMFF) at close to the last minute in both 2015 and 2016.

The death of Robert Osborne has had a ripple effect that is still being felt, though I think some of what we perceive as changes went into place before his death. With Osborne appearing less regularly, TCM had hired host Tiffany Vazquez in the Spring of 2016. Personally, I think Vazquez is coming into her own as a host, though I never had a serious problem with her from the start. Also I was somewhat surprised to see that semiregular feature "Treasures from the Disney Vault" with Leonard Maltin goes all the way back to 2014.

At the Remembering Robert Osborne panel at TCMFF,  Ben Mankiewicz offer some insight into how the network might move forward post-Robert Osborne. He told a story about how he loved music and in particular Bruce Springsteen. When Clarence Clemons of Springsteen's backing band The E Street Band died, the band didn't just hang it up. They didn't want continue without him, but they didn't want to stop either. They ended up getting Clemon's nephew, who also played saxophone, but ultimately, they end up replacing the late saxophone player with three people. He continued that there was no one person who could step into Robert Osborne's shoes. The hosting duties would be spread among several hosts.

And sure enough that's what we're seeing. We are seeing more guest programmer's. I can't say this for sure, but Ben Mankiewicz seems to have expanded his role. Illeana Douglas definitely has expanded hers. Eddie Muller now hosts a permanent show with Noir Alley, and now seems to do the promotional stuff for the wine club. This brings me to, Alec Baldwin and The Essentials.

I seem to remember a lot of complaints about Alec Baldwin on The Essentials, but I like him. He may not be the most knowledgeable person on classic film, but I do get a genuine sense of his affection for classic films, and that's good enough for me. Of the three guests he had this year, Tina Fey was easily the most engaging. As a writer/producer/actress, her insights translated well to classic Hollywood. I also heard a lot of complaints about David Letterman, but I laughed my butt off whenever he was on. Again, he is not the most knowledgeable person, but I do get the sense that he loves old movies. Yes, he is a goofball, but did you really expect anything different from him? Of the three guests on The Essentials, William Friedkin was easily the most qualified to be on the show, but for me the least interesting, though I did appreciate his comments. I just thought the rapport between Tina Fey and David Letterman and Alec Baldwin made them more a better watch for me than Friedkin's superior knowledge.

In August, Now Playing ceased as a print  publication. I'm sure this came as a blow to some. With an electronic version included with TCM Backlot, I assume that eroded subscriptions to the print version to a point where it was no longer viable. I only subscribed to Now Playing once, at a time when I was working a lot of hours, so I really didn't get a chance to read it like I should have. Having it be a purely electronic publication in my inbox twice a month is perfect for me. I read it more than when I subscribed. Of course, that's just me. Your mileage may vary.

One of the biggest complaints I hear all the time is that TCM shows too many new films. I know that Joel Williams (Joel's Classic Film Passion), one of the co-founders of #TCMParty, keeps tabs of the number of films shown, broken down by decade. He has done so since April 2016, and he was kind enough to share his numbers.

The numbers are probably a bit misleading, being based just on the number of titles. I'm guessing that 1900 to 1929 would contain more shorts and fewer feature-length films. Also, older movies particularly from the 1930s can be very short, often under 90 minutes. Because of this, I'm guessing that if this was figured based on running time on the titles shown it would skew heavier to the newer films. Then again, it seems to me that most films that TCM shows from the 1990s and 2000s are documentaries about some aspect of classic film, e.g., Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story was made in 2015, but was about film-makers from classic film.

Era	Ave. number of titles each month 2016	Ave. number of titles each month 2017	Total 2016	Total 2017
Era 1 Mostly Silent (1900-1929)	17.6	15.3	4%	4%
Era 2 Classic Talkie (1930-1959)	294.5	278.2	69%	69%
Era 3a Post-Studio (1960s)	66.7	65.6	16%	16%
Era 3b Post-Studio (1970s)	31.0	28.6	7%	7%
Era 4 Modern (1980-present)	18.7	17	4%	4%

What surprised me was not that the numbers changed, but that they didn't. I converted Joel's numbers to percentages, rounding to the nearest whole percent. The numbers are different but the percentages are the same for 2016 and 2017.

Joel broke down the numbers by decade. I thought that was a little too granular. I decided to break them down by era. I figured that 1900-1929 is mostly the silent era. I treated 1930-1959 as the second era for classic talkies. I broke the third era into two sub-eras, the 1960s and 1970s, respectively. Finally, the fourth era was anything after 1980, modern film. I treated the eras this way because what constitutes a classic film depends on whom you ask. Most will agree that films made before 1960 can be considered a classic films.  Others argue that films from 1960s are old enough to be considered classic, and some consider films from both the 1960s and 1970s are old enough to be considered classic. Thus, if your definition of classic film is:

• Pre-1960, 73% of TCM programming is classic film.
• Pre-1960 plus the 1960s, 89% of TCM programming is classic film.
• Pre-1960 plus the 1960s and 1970s, 96% of TCM programming is classic film.

By the way, I fall in the last group and don't see what people are complaining about. Most films from the 1970s are 40 years old. To me, that seems old enough to be a classic. Still, even if you fall in the first group, almost three quarters of TCM programming is classic.

Just for grins, I decided to see how February worked out (if they changed it substantially for 31 Days of Oscar). Joel started tracking this stuff in April 2016, so I only have February 2017 to work from. In February, 5 titles (1%) were from 1900-1929 (the Academy Awards only covers films made from 1927 forward, so a lower number here makes sense); 242 titles (72%) were from 1930-1959; 48 titles (14%) were the 1960s; 30 titles (9%) were from the 1970s, and 13 titles (4%). I do acknowledge that these numbers might be a little skewed. 31 Days of Oscar runs 31 days, duh, but February only has 28 days, so if even a few modern titles were shown in March, that might have a fairly big effect. Looking at just February, the numbers look pretty consistent there too. 

Just for the sake of argument, let's say TCM does show more modern films that they did five or ten years ago. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Say someone tunes into TCM to watch a film form the 1970s or 1980s and gets sucked into a film from the 1940s or 1950s, and maybe becomes a fan of  the network and classic film in general. Isn't that a good thing?

Now, me, I guess my big complaint is that it seems that TCM is replaying films more frequently than they used to. I can't back this up because I've never tracked it. It just seems like lately, TCM will show a film and then show it again a week or two later, and this seems to happen more often than it used to. Possibly, they've been doing this for years and I haven't noticed until now. Possibly, this is done to allow people in different parts of the country to watch films that played in off hours in their time zone. Possibly, this is done to save on licensing costs. Even if the latter is the case, I have to accept that TCM is a business and part of a much larger corporation, which expects that business to perform. 

According to Wikipedia, TCM is part of Time Warner, although Time Warner is in process of being bought out by AT&T, pending government approval. It might have already gone through. Wikipedia isn't always the most accurate source of information in the world. Me, I am convinced that TCM as a company, and the people who work there do care about classic film, but to the parent corporation, Time Warner or AT&T, TCM is a business unit like a ton of other business units in the corporaion. Let's say, TCM makes 7% profit in a year. Now to me, that seems pretty good. I wish I made 7% a year on my money. But corporations don't think like that. Say other business units make 8% profit while TCM only makes 7%. Or TCM made 7% profit one year but made 8% the previous year. To a corporation, that 1% difference is losing them money. As a business, TCM needs to make sure they meet the corporation's goals. If that means TCM needs to show the same film  twice in a two-week period or run the Backlot Promo more often, I can accept that.

I know we all like to think we have ownership of TCM, but we really don't. You own things that you buy.  If everyone who is reading this chipped a million dollars and if that added up to enough to buy TCM, and Time Warner or AT&T was willing to sell it, we could own TCM. Oh, wait, I just looked at my bank balance the other day, I probably don't have an extra million dollars in January, and February and March aren't looking very good either. Maybe in April, but wait, April is taxes. Then again, people who have a million dollars lying around don't pay much in taxes. I kid. I don't really have a million dollars. 

I like to think that I'm a pragmatist. I love classic film and I love TCM, but I do accept that it is a business, a business that makes its money on classic film. If that means they sometimes show a crappy public domain B movie instead of Billy Wilder or Hitchcock, I'm cool with that. If that means, I have to look at the same promo for the Noir Alley Boutique on shop.tcm.com 20 times a week, I'm cool with that too. I love classic film. I'm addicted to classic film, and TCM is what provides me my fix. When I need a good hit of Joan Blondell, where else am I going to go?