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Layoffs are underway at Disney Entertainment Television on Wednesday. Roughly 140 people are affected, representing about 2% of the total DET workforce.
National Geographic is the hardest-hit brand with about 60 layoffs, or some 13% of its staff. Other significantly impacted divisions include the ABC Owned Television Stations, Freeform, the operational side of the Disney linear entertainment networks, Unscripted, Marketing and Publicity. No teams are being eliminated.
Not surprisingly, Disney’s linear networks are taking the brunt of the staffing cuts, particularly those that do not provide the company’s streaming platforms with highly popular originals such as FX’s Shōgun or ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy that drive viewership and subscriptions.
The layoffs had been planned for months as part of a streamlining strategy at DET, with department heads given targets to hit after a division-wide review. Almost half of the eliminated positions are in Burbank, where the Disney Studios is located, and the larger Los Angeles area; the rest are largely in New York as well as Washington, D.C., where Nat Geo is headquartered.
Today’s DET staff reductions follow a range of other cuts at Disney, which has been working toward a stated goal of at least $7.5 billion in cost reductions since the start of last year. In May, Pixar Animation Studios let go about 175 people, or 14% of the staff, as the animation outfit trimmed its plans for a big expansion into Disney+ series under Disney’s new, more disciplined approach to streaming spending since Bob Iger returned as CEO in November 2022.
Traditional media companies are going through tough times amid a soft ad market — despite the influx of spending on political ads and live sports — as pay-TV continues to decline markedly and ad dollars are migrating to digital platforms.
A couple of weeks ago, Fox Entertainment eliminated about 30 positions in a restructuring. There also were layoffs at Warner Bros Discovery earlier this month.
At a Wall Street investor conference in May, Iger was asked about the company’s strategy in operating linear networks in an era of pay-TV decline. He said the company is “aggregating greater audience” while “amortizing costs” by running programming across multiple platforms in streaming, broadcast and cable. “We’re doing that across the board, Disney Channel, ABC, National Geographic, and it’s working,” he said. “Now we’re going to continue to see erosion in terms of subs for those businesses, but we’re going to actually continue to drive profitability because we’re managing our costs so effectively.”
Today’s cuts come on the heels of Disney recently netting 183 Emmy nominations for its shows, with some of the top awards performers originating on linear, including FX’s Fargo and Feud: Capote vs. The Swans and ABC’s Abbott Elementary.
Speaking with Deadline on the day of the nominations, Dana Walden, Co-Chairman of Disney Entertainment who oversees DET, expressed commitment to linear in the context of “our ecosystem of platforms, how they are integrated and how our linear strategy is embedded in our streaming strategy,” while stressing that “it starts with programming best in class content on our linear channels.”
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