Who Gets TCM When Warner Bros. Gets Sold?

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When I heard that Netflix was buying Warner Bros. for an astounding $82.7 billion dollars I had several questions that I knew the answers to. Questions like "How is this legal" (answer: is anything these days?) and what happens to theaters (Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has talked about theatrical windows getting smaller, but still existing). But the biggest and most immediate question I had was: How does this impact TCM?

To talk to any TCM lover, and even those who work for the company, they're used to the rollercoaster that is running a classic film-centric TV company in 2025. It wasn't that long since the last time the TV network was under threat when, back in 2023, Warner Bros./Discovery CEO David Zaslav entered the company and started slashing and burning everything. The large public outcry (and support of the likes of Paul Thomas Anderson and Martin Scorsese) eventually saw TCM's programming chief, Charles Tabesh, reinstated, as well as the company enfolded under the wings of the film-centric Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy.