In a Revamping, Turner Broadcasting Will Cut 1475 jobs
Time Warner 's Turner Broadcasting System group said on Monday that it was cutting its work force by about 10 percent, or about 1,475 jobs, as the cable television group tries to overhaul its business in the face of ratings declines and a digital revolution that is upending how people watch television.
The job cuts will occur across all levels of Turner, the home of the cable networks CNN, TBS and TNT.
Employees in 18 Turner locations across the world, including Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles, will lose their jobs. The Turner headquarters in Atlanta - where its founder, Ted Turner, started the business in 1970 - will be hardest hit, with 975 positions eliminated there.
John Martin, chief executive of Turner, is trying to reshape the business over the next six years. The plan, called 'Turner 2020,' was announced in June but became more important after Time Warner rejected a takeover attempt this summer by 21st Century Fox.
Time Warner, the media conglomerate that also owns HBO and the Warner Bros. movie studio, now needs to convince shareholders that it can grow on its own. The company, led by its chief executive, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, will pitch its strategy in a shareholder meeting next week.
At Turner, the strategy behind the overhaul is to focus resources on programming, technology innovation and international expansion. Turner said it was adding 150 employees in growth areas.
An important area focus is live sports, one of the few types of programming that continues to draw high ratings and lucrative licensing fees from cable and satellite TV providers. Turner's TNT and TBS hold valuable sports broadcasting assets, like the broadcasting rights for the National Basketball Association and the N.C.A.A. men's basketball tournament.
On Monday, it made its intention to invest in sports assets clear in announcing a new nine-year deal with the N.B.A. costing nearly three times what it had been paying in contracts that end after the 2015-16 season.
'Turner 2020 is designed to improve efficiency and maximize performance across the organization and will likely result in restructuring charges in the second half of this year,' Howard Averill, Time Warner's chief financial officer, said in a recent conference. 'This is all consistent with our companywide strategy to limit nonprogramming expense growth in order to fund investments and drive continued margin expansion.'
Turner generates more revenue than Time Warner's other business units. In the first half of the year, revenues at Turner increased 4.8 percent to $5.3 billion compared with the same period in 2013. Operating income increased 9.8 percent to $1.8 billion.
The layoffs will include jobs at Turner's CNN cable news group, where ratings this year are hovering near 20-year lows. Total day viewers this year are down 7.6 percent, to 122,000, compared with 2013, in the audience that attracts the most revenue for news channels, viewers aged 25 to 54, according to Nielsen.
Jeff Zucker, president of CNN, said in a call with employees in August that the group would need to 'do less and have to do it with less.'
Post a Comment for "In a Revamping, Turner Broadcasting Will Cut 1475 jobs"