WarnerMedia is expected to lay off at least 800 staff from its Warner Bros. and HBO operations as part of a major restructuring put in place by unit CEO Jason Kilar.
Warner Bros. is expected to start laying off around 650 people from Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, while HBO is expected to lay off between 150 and 175 employees. A spokesperson for WarnerMedia declined to comment.
The layoffs come after Kilar on Friday unveiled a major overhaul of the media company’s operations, ousting top HBO Max programming executives, Robert Greenblatt and Kevin Reilly, and consolidating all of WarnerMedia’s production operations into one operation. In their place, Kilar put Warner Bros. chief Ann Sarnoff in charge of developing content for the new streaming service as well as the company’s major entertainment-focused core cable networks: TNT, TBS and truTV. . Andy Forssell, Managing Director of HBO Max, has been responsible for the business operations of the new entity.
Other media companies have started laying off staff as they struggle not only with the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, but also with a rush of consumers from linear television to streaming video on demand. Comcast-owned media giant NBCUniversal has cut staff in recent days. This company has been grappling with economic headwinds brought on by theme park closures, limitations in content production and a slowdown in advertising. And earlier this week, he announced he would be raising a single executive, Frances Berwick, to manage content for streaming, cable and broadcast sites while looking for a new person to develop programming for all three.
These measures are likely to cause anxiety at WarnerMedia, which has revamped several areas of its business since it was acquired by AT&T for around $ 85 billion in 2018. Since AT&T took over the company formerly known as on behalf of Time Warner, senior executives with years of oversight of distribution, programming and advertising sales have ceased. Kilar’s rise to CEO in May has only served to fuel further recalibration.
AT&T bought the company in a bid to expand its corporate spins into content production, and executives lobbied to use Time Warner’s HBO service as the hub for a new streaming video outlet more large which features highly polished series such as “Succession” and “Watchmen”, but also larger rates like reruns of “Friends” and the new Seth Rogen comedy vehicle “An American Pickle”.
It was not an easy task. AT&T made a big start to fuel its purchase, and the industry’s so-called “streaming wars” drew many powerful entities into the fray. Comcast has also launched an NBCUniversal service, Peacock, in recent months, and ViacomCBS and Discovery have indicated their intention to join the battle more fully in the coming weeks.
As the media industry focuses more intensely on satisfying customers with on-demand jones for their favorite series, they are refining their operations and working on ways to manage the availability of their series on different viewing “windows”. Over time, that could mean a new emphasis on getting a viewer to watch both linear TV and streaming for content related to the same series or special, and less depending on separate groups of employees assigned to manage specific media.
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