TCM is in the middle of so much chaos right now.
Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson had to intervene after Warner Discover’s David Zaslav gutted the beloved channel. He fired around 70 people including all the top execs who make it so informative and cozy. The directing trio somehow got Zaslav to rehire one important person, Charles Tabesh, the longtime programmer.
Now it seems that while all this was going on, someone at TCM ordered the hosts to stop filming outro’s that talked about the movie we just saw. This will become evident, says host Dave Karger, over this weekend. But not to fear– with all the tumult, the decision was reversed and the outros will resume this fall.
Karger wrote on Twitter:
“Eagle-eyed TCM viewers will notice tomorrow that I don’t appear after the films I introduce. Same with @BenMank77 tomorrow night and Alicia on Sunday. But fret not: This change has already been reversed and our “outros” will return in September for Ben, October for me and Alicia.”
Ben Mankiewicz chimed in: “I know this seems like a bad omen to @TCM fans, but it’s a good sign. Outros – the made up word we use – were ordered back even before they went away. The lag time in production means we’ll wait until September until they reappear. Think of outros as taking a summer vacation.”
This stuff may not seem important in the face of global climate change, the Ukraine, immigration, and so on, but it is– this is what makes that other stuff palatable. TCM should not be tampered with under any conditions.
