Why Matthew Shepard’s Story Was So Important For Investigation Discovery to Finally Tell, 25 Years Later

variety.com:

Jason Sarlanis Jason Sarlanis is the president of Turner Networks, Investigation Discovery (ID) and HLN, linear and streaming.

The two-hour documentary special “The Matthew Shepard Story: An American Hate Crime” airs Monday, Oct. 9, at 9 p.m. ET on ID (ahead of the 25th anniversary of Shepard’s death on Oct.

12). Last week, I was sitting in a conference room at our Warner Bros. Discovery offices in Burbank presenting a PowerPoint for an ID all-hands meeting.

As a network suit, it’s one of the “suit-ier” things I do. After recapping our third-quarter ratings momentum and reminding the team to sign up for our annual Volunteer Day, I shared a clip from our forthcoming documentary special, “The Matthew Shepard Story: An American Hate Crime.” While the two-minute clip played, any artifice of a corporate suit disappeared and I immediately reverted to being a closeted teenager in the ’90s, my eyes welling up with tears in front of my colleagues.