Warner Bros. Discovery’s cable channels hit with layoffs
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Warner Bros. Discovery is the latest media company to shed employees from its cable TV channels, with several dozen positions jettisoned Wednesday.
The layoffs, confirmed by an executive not authorized to comment publicly, are aimed at improving efficiency across the company as cable TV revenues sink because of cord-cutting.
The moves at Warner Bros. Discovery come two days after the Walt Disney Co. implemented a bloodletting across its film and television marketing teams, television publicity, casting and development as well as corporate operations.
The cuts at Disney numbered in the hundreds. The figure for Warner Bros. Discovery is much smaller than that, though an exact number was not disclosed.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s movie and TV production studios and streaming operation, soon to go back to its earlier name, HBO Max, will not be hit by the cutbacks.
As the audience moves to streaming, TV stations are pressing Washington for relief.
The cuts come as Warner Bros. Discovery is said to be pondering a possible spinoff of its declining cable TV assets, which include its Turner channels, Discovery Networks, HGTV and Food Network, similar to what Comcast is doing with its NBCUniversal cable outlets (with the exception of Bravo).
Comcast is putting MSNBC, CNBC, the Golf Channel, USA Network and other outlets into a new company called Versant, separating the mature businesses from the rest of the company as it focuses on streaming.
Warner Bros. Discovery recently reorganized into two business units. The entertainment giant last year took a $9.1-billion writedown to reflect the declining value of its TV networks.
The cuts at Warner Bros. Discovery come just a day after a rare shareholder rebuke of its executive pay packages, a sign of growing unhappiness with the company’s financial performance.
A majority of Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders voted against the 2024 compensation package given to Chief Executive David Zaslav and other executives at the company’s recent annual meeting, according to a regulatory filing.
Almost 60% of the votes cast came in against the 2024 executive pay package at the company, according to a regulatory filing Tuesday. The vote is nonbinding, and thus symbolic.
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