Paramount Skydance's $80bn Merger Puts Turner Classic Movies Back on the Brink

Skydance's newly merged media giant carries roughly $80bn in debt, and Turner Classic Movies — the 31-year-old cable channel reaching 68.2 million homes as of 2020 — has no confirmed place in its future.

In early October, Paramount Skydance announced its acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, sweeping in a portfolio of cable channels including CNN, MTV and TCM. Fans panicked when a flowchart, allegedly produced by the new company and circulated on a Reddit forum for TCM viewers, listed its new properties without TCM's logo. "This is very ominous," one user wrote. "Doomed," wrote another. The image is of unverified origin, and Skydance's website does include TCM on a list of brands.

A TCM representative declined to comment on the record. A Skydance representative did not comment on the company's intentions for TCM. IndieWire reported the official line: the network is staying put for now.

What happened the last time an owner cut TCM?

The fear has precedent. In 2023, following the $43bn merger of Warner Bros and Discovery, executives laid off several TCM leaders, including longtime head of programming Charles Tabesh. Film buffs read the move as a death knell. Directors Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Spielberg called Warner Bros Discovery chief David Zaslav directly. Zaslav brought Tabesh back — though not the roughly 70 TCM staffers also cut.

Now staff across the merged company are reportedly bracing for layoffs. "One of the easiest ways to remedy some of that debt is to sell some of the linear TV assets," said Gabriel Miller, co-founder of the Industry, a film production newsletter. "Obviously David Ellison isn't going to sell CNN, but something like Comedy Central or BET might be something that potentially ends up getting sold."

Whether TCM lands on that list is the open question — and one the company is not answering.

How does TCM make money without commercials?

The channel, launched in 1994 by CNN founder Ted Turner, airs uncut films without advertising — no car insurance spots interrupting Katharine Hepburn or Spencer Tracy. Revenue comes from carriage fees and streaming subscriptions, via an app available to existing cable or live-TV customers. It also hosts live events, including a Los Angeles film festival and a classic film cruise that set sail earlier this month.

The audience skews devoted. TCM does not share ratings, but its reach — 68.2 million homes in 2020 — includes retirees, small-town viewers and Scenicse, who reportedly keeps the channel on in his editing suite.

Its hosts, led by Ben Mankiewicz, grandson of Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, deliver insider film lore. Tom Hanks once recounted on TCM having to tell Bette Davis she had stolen his wife's seat at an Oscars afterparty. Donald Trump appeared on the channel in 2007, comparing himself to Charles Foster Kane.

Do the believers think TCM survives?

Miller gives Skydance CEO David Ellison credit for sincerity. "I think he's someone who actually cares about cinema and is going to try to make [TCM] work," he said. Ellison, son of Larry Ellison — the eighth-richest man in the world, a Trump ally who donated $45m to a pro-Trump PAC in 2024 — has downplayed political ties, saying he doesn't "want to politicize" Skydance.

Media historian Chris Yogerst, author of a book on the original Warner brothers, sees a plausible streaming pivot modeled on the Criterion Collection. "They could make a hub [on HBO Max] or an app where the brand still serves the same format, but it's just adapting to the digital era a little bit more effectively," Yogerst said.

Peter Saraf, chair of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, argues the drama itself has value. "When Zaslav tried to shut down TCM, he actually did it such an amazing promotional favor," Saraf said. "Just the fear of something going away makes you want to watch it even more. I think it would be very foolish of Ellison to even consider touching it."

What is at stake beyond the balance sheet?

The channel's cultural pull is measurable in anecdotes. At a recent TCM festival, history professor Marsha Gordon introduced a 35mm print of The Divorcee at 10am on a Friday and expected about 30 attendees; nearly 500 showed up. "They were reacting exactly as you would imagine people would have reacted in 1930: laughing and holding their breath and boo-ing at the right places," she said.

Karie Bible, an author and tour guide at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, put it more personally. "It's kind of emotional to explain, but TCM has been like a close, comforting friend during some very dark hours of my life," she said, recalling watching Hitchcock's Rear Window from a hospital gurney and refusing to leave until What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? ended.

For now, the schedule holds: Sweater Weather, the channel's October double-feature series, runs through fall. Whether it returns next year under the same owner is the question Skydance has declined to answer.