Host Intros/Outros

[monsieur_sniffles]

Has anyone else noticed that as of late 95% of their content is pulled directly from the "Articles & Reviews" section of TCM's site?

Man, the days of Robert Osborne (or even Tiffany Vasquez) really are long gone...

[TikiSoo]

I was actually never impressed by Robert Osborne's writing staff. I always thought someone who really knew what interested the average viewer with a strong knowledge of classic movie history would have been a better writer & host. Someone along the lines of Leonard Maltin or the President of our Cinephile Society.
I don't read TCMs site, they obviously no longer care about serving or nurturing their audience.

[monsieur_sniffles]

I was actually never impressed by Robert Osborne's writing staff.

I'm pretty certain they wrote them. Or at least they used to. When Osborne or Mankiewicz would have a bylined feature in the Now Playing guide, it would be their intros word for word.

They certainly don't employ a fact checking staff. Hence Vasquez's error ridden intros.

[jamesjazzguitar]

Has anyone else noticed that as of late 95% of their content is pulled directly from the "Articles & Reviews" section of TCM's site?

Man, the days of Robert Osborne (or even Tiffany Vasquez) really are long gone...

To me many people are expecting too much from a network that doesn't have commercials and doesn't charge a subscription fee.

[laffite]

I thought a great deal of Robert Osborne and his intros. I'm always aghast when someone say the opposite. To each ... ha. Back in the 90s he compared favorably over those two at AMC. Perfect gentlemen, I'm sure, but the intros were often odd or quirky. Osborne was absolutely the best. He didn't give away too much of the movie or I would not have continued watching him.

[ziggy6708a]

BTW
"the "Articles & Reviews" section of TCM's site"
has pretty well dried up

[Sue Sue Applegate]

It saddens me to see how some of the content is now not as well-researched as in the past. I’ve noticed more errors in the last few years than I care to mention. Sometimes the intros just seem to be a laundry list of awards or a run-down of other credits for an actor. All the intros are now prepared by contract writers. Eddie Muller writes all his own material or course, and Ben usually adds personal comments to his prepared intros. The website is slowly flattening. Links are slower, database articles seem to disappear, and daily schedule themes aren’t mentioned.

[monsieur_sniffles]

To me many people are expecting too much from a network that doesn't have commercials and doesn't charge a subscription fee.

I don't know where you're living with it's free TCM, but here in Comcast land (eastern coast of the US) TCM just keeps getting more, and more, and more costly as it gets pushed further and further down the cable packages. I WISH they'd have a subscription fee. I'd dump comcast and pay it in a heartbeat.

That said, I never bought into the 'TCM makes no money' theory. It operates as a public service with major cultural value, which is the gilded tier of tax credits (and I'm sure you've seen a news story or two about how much WB/Discovery likes their tax credits). So while it doesn't generate income in pharmaceutical ads, it's has fiscal value far beyond that (there's a reason that Turner's stations have changed hands like eight times, yet TCM remains unchanged)

[sagebrush]

BTW
"the "Articles & Reviews" section of TCM's site"
has pretty well dried up

Yes! I often get a "no information available" under just a photo still of the selected film. Sometimes, the film has the wrong year listed, other times it is a different film entirely.