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 has also started cutting staff at its cable networks. This time though, the cuts include some very senior executives at the cable networks, according to Deadline.
According to reports, cuts include staff overseeing its cable networks like Animal Planet, Oxygen, Food Network, HGTV, TLC, Discovery, TBS, TNT, TruTV, and Science.
Streaming was not left untouched by these cuts, including Amy Introcaso-Davis, who was the EVP, Development and Production, Factual Programming, Discovery. She also oversaw some development of Discovery+ programming.
Exactly how deep these cuts will be is unknown at this time. 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.”
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.