After the NBA drama, TNT returns to drama

There simply aren't enough drama reruns in the world to keep TNT afloat in its current state, so Warner Bros. Discovery is changing things up. Essentially, it's turning back the clock.

As first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by IndieWire, WBD wants to bring original drama series back to TNT, which, when it wasn't doing live sports, had become a dumping ground for drama reruns and action movies. The company will also open up the WB film library to remake several films as TV movies or series for TNT. We probably won't get a “Batgirl” or “Coyote vs. Acme” series.

Why this change in strategy? Well, Warner Bros. Discovery recently lost its most valuable asset, the NBA, to Amazon Prime Video (essentially). A TNT without the NBA simply can't charge the roughly $3 per customer price that cable provider WBD pays. That's pretty expensive – but it's not ESPN. As we recently learned from Fubo's successful cease-and-desist action against Venu Sports, Disney charges cable providers $9.42 per customer to carry ESPN; Venu is a joint venture between Disney, WBD and Fox.

Warner Bros. Discovery is currently negotiating broadcast deals with cable giants Comcast and Charter that will resume in a few years. Other sports rights — the company recently signed new deals for the French Open (tennis) and Big East college basketball and already has some college football and NHL games — will help some. The return of original shows in prime time could help even more. The key word is some — this amount is not enough for the NBA.

In June 2021, cable TV accounted for 40.1 percent of all TV viewing. In June 2024, it was 26.7 percent. Not a numbers person? OK, that's how dead cable TV is: Many FX shows don't even air on FX – they stream exclusively on Hulu.

Yet for many media giants like Warner Bros. Discovery, cable is still the platform that generates revenue, profit and cash flow. It's just a lot less these days. WBD said its entire linear TV business is worth $9 billion less than it originally thought, and the NBA loss was a big part of that. Cable czar David Zaslav is still $37.5 billion in debt and needs to squeeze every penny out of the medium before he cuts the tether. That means the new shows have to be produced cheaply—a perfectly viable strategy for making lemonade out of lemons. Zaslav, who became CEO of Discovery, Inc. in 2006, a year after the network's flagship channel launched the hit series “Deadliest Catch,” is riding that cable wave until it crashes—or capsizes all boats.

Soon, Channing Dungey will be captain of the sinking ship. When Kathleen Finch retires at the end of the year, WBTV Group CEO Dungey will assume oversight of the so-called “TNets” – TNT, TBS and truTV – as well as HGTV, Food Network, the Discovery Channel and ID.

TNT has plunged headfirst into its previously explored territory. The network has ordered “The Librarians: The Next Chapter,” a sequel to the supernatural adventure series “The Librarians,” which aired on the network for four seasons a decade ago. “The Librarians” (2014-2018) was itself a spinoff of the Noah Wyle-directed television movie series “The Librarian.” Wyle will produce the new series.

“The Librarian”/“The Librarians” aired during the heyday of TNT’s “We Know Drama.” Back then, TNT was a top-rated cable network with original series like “Saving Grace” (2007-2010), “Rizzoli & Isles” (2010-2016) and “The Last Ship” (2014-2018). Since then, no one has been able to define exactly what TNT is or should be. Facing a similar identity crisis are its sister networks TBS, which usually airs sitcom reruns and a bit of baseball, and truTV, home of “Impractical Jokers” and some old reality shows.

Even within a shrinking medium, these TNets are struggling. TNT was the fifth most-watched cable channel in 2022. It fell to 10th in 2023. TBS fell from 7th in 2022 to 14th in 2023, and truTV was always kind of irrelevant.

TNT has also ordered a four-hour miniseries with the working title “Debriefing the President,” which dramatizes the true life story of CIA analyst John Nixon, who was the first American to positively identify and interrogate Saddam Hussein in 2003. The series is scheduled to air in 2025 – if cable television still exists by then.