ABC News Cuts About 70 More People on Staff : Further Belt-Tightening in Wake of Takeover

ABC News on Monday laid off nearly 70 people as part of a staff reduction begun last fall just before American Broadcasting Cos. was taken over by cost-conscious Capital Cities Communications.

No correspondents were let go, ABC News spokeswoman Carol Olwert said. She said that 70 positions were eliminated and that only a few of the jobs were vacant when dismissal notices were sent out. Seven employees also decided to take early retirement, she added.

The layoffs, made “across the board,” affected news producers, writers, editors, production assistants and secretaries, she said, and will be coupled with efforts to trim expenditures by various departments, including money paid for satellite time. She had no estimate of how much money ABC News hopes to save by this.

She said the layoffs stemmed from studies by a management task force that last fall “looked long and hard at areas that could be trimmed.” Its recommendations led to Monday’s job cuts, she said.

Trails Other Networks

ABC News is confident that the cutbacks won’t hurt its news-gathering efforts, she added. She said that there may be “a few more” layoffs later on but that they won’t be anywhere near the number announced by the network Monday.

The cuts come as ABC is mired in third place in the prime-time ratings and raised to nearly 100 the number of ABC News staffers laid off since the staff reductions began. The figure includes 12 people who had worked for ABC’s “Closeup” documentary unit until they got pink slips in November.

ABC’s layoffs are the second within a year to hit a network news division. Last year, 125 jobs were eliminated by CBS News, which cited a “listless economy” and the $1-billion cost of defeating Ted Turner’s attempt to take over CBS Inc. as the reasons for its action.

In that staff reduction, one of the biggest ever to hit a network news organization, 74 employes were dismissed, including three correspondents. It reduced CBS News’ staff to about 1,275 worldwide.

After Monday’s cuts, ABC News will have a worldwide staff of 1,080, the division’s spokeswoman said.