Variety brings words of more mass layoffs. NBC Universal is letting 500 staff go across its worldwide operations. This is part of an effort on behalf of the media giant to excise $500 million from its budget next year (a reduction of 3% of the total budget). Some specific people lost?
Not surprisingly, bureau operations suffered a trimming. Longtime Dallas correspondent Don Teague was jettisoned, while cuts in the L.A. office, reportedly of as many as seven staffers, include correspondent and “Dateline” contributor John Larson as well as Mark Mullen, recently returned from a stint heading the Beijing bureau during the Olympics. Special-events bureau chief Heather Allan, a 30-plus-year Peacock vet who also contributed to the net’s record-breaking Olympics coverage, was also let go.
Viacom handed walking papers to 850 on Thursday. And they weren’t the only ones.
News of Viacom’s belt-tightening came on the same day AT&T laid off 12,000 workers, while CEOs of the bankrupt Big Three automakers groveled in Congress for a financial bailout. This week a handful of major book publishers chopped jobs. Even the Masters of the Universe at white glove Carlyle Group axed 100 positions, as Carlyle became the first big private equity firm to cut staff thus far. And digital media company RealNetworks, which runs the Rhapsody online music service with MTV and is also a major player in Web gaming, announced Thursday that it is laying off about 130 people, 7.5% of its staff.
It should come as no surprise that all of this is impacting outside media as well. The Hollywood Reporter made cuts, too. Cuts there hit every area, from film correspondants to editors and graphics staff.
At this point, it remains to be seen in terms of what impact this will have on entertainment going forward. It’s sufficient to say that foundations are shaking, and the looming possibility of a SAG strike (after the billions in losses inflicted by the prior WGA strike) could strike a fatal blow to a number of companies. While some economists expect a mid-2009 rally, it’s understandably hard to be optimistic about the big picture on days like these.
Related: Heidi’s all over the various coverage of publishing layoffs. Yeeeeesh; it’s ugly out there.
December 5th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
NBC should just have Michael Scott run things. Even in these hards times at a struggling paper company, he was able to get a surplus.
December 5th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
I feel sorry for the people who loss there jobs. NBC lacks leadership and talent. There is nothing worth watching on their networks anymore…makes you miss the “Must See TV of the 90′s” even more. Even Sci-Fi has become lame, the only NBC things I watch now is all of Sunday Night Football and the Weather Channel…and that’s for like 2 min. Seriously, you would think General Electric would step in and tell them to put something on that was worth a crap. Hope things turn around.