Comcast cut nearly 50 employees across its Peacock marketing team, NBCUniversal Entertainment and ad sales divisions, according to Variety.
The majority of the cuts, which were confirmed by Cord Cutters News, were felt at Peacock, were part of a restructuring under Chief Marketing Officer Shannon Willett, who took the reins a year and a half ago. The cuts aren’t related to saving money — the streaming service is hiring more senior people to fill new roles created by the reorganization.
But Comcast has had several rounds of cuts over the last few months as it deals with the pressures of cord cutting. In the last quarter, it reported losing 490,000 video customers and 18,000 broadband customers. While the company’s Peacock streaming service added 4 million subscribers to bring its total to 28 million, it still trails far behind other second-tier competitors such as Max or Paramount+.
The cuts are just the latest to hit the media world, which has suffered from a cratering ad market. DISH this week also let go 500 staff at its headquarters in Colorado. From journalists to marketing and entertainment employees, layoffs have been all too common over the last year. While most of the layoffs have been related to cutting costs, the Peacock ones were more about a strategic shift.
The Peacock restructuring involves organizing under five areas: business and creative marketing; title creative and marketing; marketing strategy, planning, analysis, and performance media; growth and lifecycle marketing; and publicity, events and talent engagement.
“As you may have heard, we have some colleagues leaving the company as a result of this restructure and we have held discussions with these team members today. Additionally, we will also be hiring for key new roles, including at senior levels, to support the newly aligned team,” Willett said in a memo to the Peacock team.
The NBCUniversal Entertainment division also saw a few positions eliminated because of another realignment of its operatons. The ad sales team lost three senior roles, part of bigger changes in the division related to Alison Levin joining as president of the division from Roku.