Just Deserts: Tabesh at Turner Classic Movies

TCM’s programmer being rehired may signal strength and vitality at Warner Bros.

Three men make today’s cultural achievement known as Turner Classic Movies (TCM) possible: Ted Turner, an advertising and real estate upstart from the American South who created the cable television channel in the early 1990s; Robert Osborne, an actor and Hollywood trade publication columnist who was TCM’s first host and programming boss Charles Tabesh—who recently exited TCM. In a rare, abrupt and potentially promising Hollywood reversal, Tabesh re-joined TCM this week.

Ted Turner, a former Ayn Rand admirer who also pioneered journalism with the Cable News Network (CNN), is rarely heard from after selling his businesses. Robert Osborne, who introduced Ted Turner’s TCM in 1994 with an initial, intelligent and unapologetic screening of Gone With the Wind, died in 2017. Working with a small band in Atlanta and LA, Tabesh, a sports and entertainment broadcasting businessman in Southern California, studies, contemplates and selects which movies air on the channel, which runs via satellites and America’s monopolistic and beleaguered cable TV utility system. Of course, there are other fine TCM employees. These three men infuse TCM’s essence; I know this about Charlie Tabesh because Robert Osborne, an undervalued movie thinker and historian whom I interviewed many times, explicitly chose to credit Charlie over and over—always on the record.

For worse or for better, TCM’s owned by a company among a bunch of companies that are owned by AT&T. TCM’s parent company, Warner Bros., a movie studio celebrating its centennial this year (which I’m writing about) is run by David Zaslav, whom I recently wrote about in my roundup of TCM’s Classic Film Festival in Hollywood. TCM, which had recently parted with Tabesh after budget cuts, announced the stunning turnaround. The Hollywood Reporter writes that:

Tabesh is expected to be able to bring some of his team back with him when he returns. One TCM source was pleasantly surprised that [Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David] Zaslav had reversed course. “I didn’t think he’d listen,” the TCM source says. “I didn’t think he’d bring back the most important person at the channel.”

A trio of film directors, including Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, had reached out to Zaslav, whose commitment to TCM has been questioned, partly in defense of Tabesh. Besides bringing Tabesh back to TCM, the apparent result, according to Variety, is that the three movie directors are contracted to review TCM’s programming, including its exemplary interstitial programming, such as the TCM Remembers segments. After Spielberg, Scorsese et al intervened, Warner Bros. Pictures Group co-heads Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy were put in charge of TCM.

This executive decision has potential to raise TCM’s profile in an increasingly mixed media industry—it already has—while keeping Zaslav at liberty to streamline and enhance TCM, perhaps with a more focused approach on quality, reach and range. Most of TCM’s anti-Zaslav, would-be defenders ignore or evade that TCM was already being diluted in recent years, with various purges, cuts, overbearing co-host political commentary, pandering to elusive and nebulous “influencers” and a bland new logo. Amid the channel’s mediocrity creep, TCM’s movie commentary, discourse and contextualization often slips into apologia and erroneous or flawed presentations, as I recently noted in my review of one of Hollywood’s best pictures, Casablanca.

Ought Turner Classic Movies to be improved—and expanded for wider audiences, including giving audiences the benefit of the doubt in holding and judging context?

Absolutely. And, while the question doesn’t begin or end with Charlie Tabesh programming TCM’s schedule, Charlie’s diligence, loyalty and ability to mine a film for its meaning—including integrating radical and unusual themes—can offer an advantage to Warner Bros. by showcasing movies in a way that can be watched, welcomed and appreciated by those of us who reject the leftist vs. conservative dichotomy as false.

Showing movies uncut and commercial-free, as TCM’s original tagline once (and no longer) pledges, not mangled for political correctness as the Criterion Channel recently did to The French Connection—reflects TCM’s core value. Investing money and, above all, nurturing talented staff who revere the movies as they are—these are signs that David Zaslav can let Warner Bros. lead Hollywood for the next 100 years in making bold, challenging movies that call upon, instill and honor American values.

Movies matter. Restoring Charlie Tabesh to programming Ted Turner’s Turner Classic Movies can do wonders for Warner Bros., the movies and the world.

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