In college, Charlie Tabesh studied “math-heavy” Quantitative Economics. Not quite the background you’d expect for someone overseeing a continuous, round-the-clock film festival seen by millions.
So, did the econ degree help Tabesh figure out how to program TCM, where he is the longtime senior vice president of programming?
“No,” he said, quickly admitting it got him out of having to write academic papers. “But I will say what I do does involve analytical skills, because you have to balance budgets. And you have to manage the money. And you have to be able to not just think creatively but also think in an analytical way.”
TCM Now Seen in 86 Million Homes
For Tabesh, whose demeanor is that of an understated yet hip college professor, it's really the creative part of the job that brings him joy: overseeing the 24/7 scheduling of vintage films for a channel seen in 86 million homes.
Which makes you wonder: Tabesh can’t possibly screen every film before it airs, can he?
“Not even close,” he said, smiling. A team of programmers – film freaks all – do a lot of the legwork. And brainstorming is a key reason for the gang’s esprit de corps.
“I’m not doing the schedule for everything all the time, by any stretch. In fact, a lot of that is, we will decide as a team who we want to do as Star of the Month. We will decide what theme we want to cover in a particular month, and we assign that to different people to, sort of, ‘Okay, you’re in charge of this theme, go and research it.
"‘Go figure out what are the key films. You know, what are we missing that we don’t have? What do we need to go get and how would it play best?’”
Tabesh Sets TCM Tone
Tabesh also credits TCM Programming Director Stephanie Thames, who does much of the heavy lifting. “She puts together a lot of those things. I still do a fair amount myself, but the day-to-day scheduling is, for the most part, not done by me.”
Instead, Tabesh sets the tone and the agenda, building on a love of movies that began when he was growing up blocks from the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica.
The first movie he ever saw: Dumbo, at a drive-in with his stepfather. “And then I remember Francis the Talking Mule on television. I think the Francis movies really got me into watching (films)."
That thirst for movies was slaked by beloved local TV host Tom Hatten, whose weekend movies on KTLA were like a film school for kids. “He would turn on the projector, and I remember I got sucked into -- that’s how I really got started into movies.”
TCM Programming Chief Started on Phone Book Duty
After earning that economics degree at UC San Diego, Tabesh, eager for any kind of job, worked briefly as a proofreader for a San Diego publisher of phone books. He and compatriots struggled to ensure the White Pages were accurate. “So that was going line by line," Tabesh said, air-tracing imaginary columns of data, "and just looking and comparing, and making sure…”
It was brutal, mind-numbing work. “I didn’t last very long.”
Tabesh considered law school. He returned home to L.A., where he landed a temp job in the ad sales department of the Z Channel.
The fabled, pioneering cable movie service flourished in L.A. in the seventies and eighties. By the time Tabesh arrived in 1989, Z was foundering, undone by competition from HBO and from real-life horror: its troubled programming guru, Jerry Harvey, killed his wife and then himself.
Z Channel Eventually Led Tabesh to Starz Job
The mood there was understandably dark, but Tabesh the movie lover was in his element and stayed on permanently. Soon, however, Z was sold and converted to a sports channel. Tabesh finagled his way into the programming department and stayed two years – until Sports Channel L.A. went belly-up.
Fortuitously, a former boss from Z was programming Starz, the premium movie channel run out of Denver. A job opened up and Tabesh applied. “He had liked me as (a Z) employee. He kind of knew I was a movie guy, but he wasn’t 100-percent sure.”
So at the interview, he put Tabesh on the spot. No problem – Tabesh had anticipated getting quizzed – and crammed for it with Leonard Maltin’s movie guide.
“He gave me 100 movies and said, ‘Here, put it into as many festivals as you can.’ So, here’s a noir festival, here’s a director, here’s an actor, whatever, and I just did a bunch and I did well enough, so he hired me.
“And truthfully, I was so much happier working in movies than in sports. I love sports, but it’s a hobby and it’s a different kind of thing.”
Tabesh Joined TCM in 1997
Tabesh stayed with Starz for four years – until the TCM position opened up. He’s been with TCM ever since – 15 years now – running programming from New York, with frequent trips to Turner Broadcasting in Atlanta. Last year, he asked to move home to L.A. so he, his wife and their young daughter could be closer to family.
They now live a few blocks from where Tabesh grew up. And while his staff remains in Atlanta, Tabesh runs programming from existing Turner offices in Burbank.
TCM has access to the Turner Library, a combination of the various studio archives (including MGM and Warner Bros.) TV visionary and channel founder Ted Turner acquired in the eighties. But the channel is not limited to just that collection.
“One of the things I’ve always been adamant about since coming to TCM is: We’re not just gonna be the Turner Library Channel. And that’s something we really became more aggressive about – going out and finding, doing deals with other studios.”
TCM Rivalry With Fox
One, 20th Century Fox, used to deny TCM access to its films, presumably because its own Fox Movie Channel was among TCM’s few rivals for classic film programming, but that has changed.
“A few years ago, they said, ‘You know what? We’re ready to (rent out) our library.’" By then, many Fox films were airing on American Movie Classics, but AMC changed formats and FXM made its own sweeping changes, leaving TCM the only purist vintage movie channel.
“And I think they (Fox) were happy to take our money, so they looked at us and said, ‘Here are the movies we have available.’ So we did a deal with them.”
Turner Classic Movies: It's All About Context
Tabesh’s basic programming philosophy is two-fold:
“One is, we’re about the history of movies. So that’s pretty broad, but …it’s not just American movies. It’s not just movies from the thirties, forties and fifties. There’s no specific category that you can say, ‘That can’t include…’ And I think that’s an important thing, because we’ll certainly play more contemporary films, we’ll play foreign language films…
“Beyond that…what’s important to the programming is context, so that every night’s a different film festival. There’s always thought given to the films. Why they’re there. It could be a very serious reason, it could be a fun, quirky reason, it could be…whatever.”
TCM Happily Steals Programming Ideas From Own Viewers
TCM frequently schedules “stunts” – themed programming slates and festivals. In planning them, Tabesh takes a decidedly democratic approach.
“We sort of throw out ideas together. We take ideas from people all the time. I swear, if you have an idea and we like it, we will steal it and do it.
“You look on our website. There are (fans) that do the TCM Programming Challenge and they each do their own schedules and vote on each others’ schedules, and there are things that come from that, and it's, like, ‘That’s a great festival, we’re gonna do that.’ And we tell them, ‘We’re gonna do that,’ and they’re happy.
“So, I think and hope that we’re open about listening from everybody.”
He adds, however, that “at the end of the day,” all programming decisions must be made within common-sense considerations, especially budgetary limits.
“So we try to get a balance, we try to go into places that we’ve never gone before. We try to mix up a balance – not just eras and genres either, but serious, more academic subjects versus more fun; we try to balance that, too, because we definitely want to be a place that’s educational and serious, and teaches people and that we learn, too.
“But at the same time, we sometimes just want to have fun.”
Barry M. Grey - Barry M. Grey is a non-fiction TV writer-producer in Los Angeles whose love of classic film borders on the dangerously obsessive.
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