Warner Bros. Discovery, as its cable TV business continues to shrink and viewership falls, has made targeted job cuts across its linear networks.
The media conglomerate’s linear TV business includes TNT, TBS, CNN, Food Network, Discovery, TLC, Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies. The layoffs affect well under 100 employees, a source familiar with the situation told Variety. The source added that no particular location or network was impacted more than others. The cuts — like those at other pay-TV networks affected by cord-cutting declines — are aimed at WBD’s ongoing goal of operating more efficiently.
Word of the layoffs in WBD’s cable group comes after Disney cuts its headcount by several hundred employees this week, affecting staffers in TV, film and corporate finance.
For the first quarter of 2025, revenue in Warner Bros. Discovery’s global linear TV networks business fell 7%, to $4.7 billion. Ad revenue fell 12%, while distribution revenue was off by 9%. The company cited declines in audiences at its networks for the downturns. In Q1, adjusted operating income for the cable TV group fell 15% year over year, to $1.79 billion.
Last month, S&P Global Ratings cut Warner Bros. Discovery’s credit rating to junk status based on the firm’s lowered earnings forecast for 2025-26 primarily due to the “continued revenue and cash flow declines at its linear TV operations.”
In Q1, Warner Bros. Discovery said, it completed the process of reorganizing the company into two divisions: one comprising its streaming business (plus HBO) and production studios, and the other composed of the rest of its cable TV portfolio. The reorg will “create opportunities as we evaluate all avenues to deliver significant shareholder value,” CEO David Zaslav said in originally announcing the separation last December.
In the second quarter of 2024, Warner Bros. Discovery took a $9.1 billion charge against earnings related to the devaluation of the company’s TV networks.
Separately, at this year’s annual stockholders meeting, Warner Bros. Discovery investors delivered a symbolic shot across the bow: Shareholders voted down a non-binding advisory measure to approve the 2024 pay packages of Zaslav — whose compensation last year totaled $51.9 million, up 4.4% — and the company’s other named executive officers. After the vote, the WBD board said in a statement that it “takes the results of the annual advisory vote on executive compensation seriously” and that the board’s compensation committee
“looks forward to continuing its regular practice of engaging in constructive dialogue with our shareholders.”
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Warner Bros. Discovery, as its cable TV business continues to shrink and viewership falls, has made targeted job cuts.