Recently Paramount announced that it will cut 25% of its staff at cable networks. Disney has also announced plans to cut thousands of staff across its company, including at its networks. Now it is being reported that Warner Bros. Discovery will also cut staff at its cable networks. This comes from sources at Deadline who claim to have talked to sources with knowledge of the planned cuts.
According to the reports, the cuts will impact Warner Bros. Discovery networks, including Discovery Channel, TLC, Investigation Discovery, Science Channel, Animal Planet, former Scripps networks Food Network, and HGTV, as well as Turner-branded networks such as TNT, TBS, and truTV.
This comes as Warner Bros. Discovery’s CEO David Zaslav said during the company’s 1st quarter 2023 earnings call that he wants to stop the bleeding in areas that are losing money.
“The key here is our streaming business is no longer a bleeder,” Zaslav said during the earnings call. “It’s hard to run a business when you have a big bleeder. And so getting this business under control, focusing on what people love to watch, how do we create content that people love? And now as we launch Max, we’ll be able to nourish and delight subscribers with the greatness of HBO, which on Sunday nights is really a cultural moment, whether it’s ‘White Lotus,’ ‘House of the Dragon,’ ‘The Last of Us,’ ‘Succession,’ and then put it together with Discovery content which has been really strong for us.”
According to the reports, these layoffs will start this summer, but no exact date is known.
It seems that Warner Bros. Discovery is joining a growing number of companies cutting back on cable TV staff as it focuses more on streaming. This news comes as Warner Bros. Discovery recently launched Max and has been focusing its efforts on the new streaming service.