AT&T Plans Thousands of Layoffs At HBO, Warner Bros., Rest of WarnerMedia (arstechnica.com) 36
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T is planning thousands of layoffs at HBO, Warner Bros., and other parts of WarnerMedia as part of a plan to cut costs by up to 20 percent, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. WarnerMedia is what used to be called Time Warner Inc. before AT&T purchased the entertainment company in 2018. Layoffs and cost cuts are nothing new at AT&T in general, including at WarnerMedia. But WarnerMedia has taken a particularly big hit since the pandemic began. AT&T laid off about 600 people from WarnerMedia in August, a prelude to the new cuts revealed yesterday. The Journal wrote: "AT&T's WarnerMedia is restructuring its workforce as it seeks to reduce costs by as much as 20 percent as the coronavirus pandemic drains income from movie tickets, cable subscriptions and television ads, according to people familiar with the matter. The overhaul, which is expected to begin in the coming weeks, would result in thousands of layoffs across Warner Bros. studios and TV channels like HBO, TBS and TNT, the people said."
WarnerMedia had nearly 30,000 employees earlier this year. A WarnerMedia spokesperson told Ars that "we are not discussing or confirming any speculative numbers" regarding how many jobs will be cut. The job reductions are part of the restructuring that was announced in August, the spokesperson also said. "Like the rest of the entertainment industry, we have not been immune to the significant impact of the pandemic. That includes an acceleration in shifting consumer behavior, especially in the way content is being viewed," WarnerMedia said. "We shared with our employees recently that the organization will be restructured to respond to those changes and prioritize growth opportunities, with an emphasis on direct-to-consumer. We are in the midst of that process and it will involve increased investments in priority areas and, unfortunately, reductions in others."
WarnerMedia had nearly 30,000 employees earlier this year. A WarnerMedia spokesperson told Ars that "we are not discussing or confirming any speculative numbers" regarding how many jobs will be cut. The job reductions are part of the restructuring that was announced in August, the spokesperson also said. "Like the rest of the entertainment industry, we have not been immune to the significant impact of the pandemic. That includes an acceleration in shifting consumer behavior, especially in the way content is being viewed," WarnerMedia said. "We shared with our employees recently that the organization will be restructured to respond to those changes and prioritize growth opportunities, with an emphasis on direct-to-consumer. We are in the midst of that process and it will involve increased investments in priority areas and, unfortunately, reductions in others."
Every industry is going through this (Score:4, Insightful)
Result of unforeseen circumstances(COVID), bad business decisions(DIRECTV), customer belt tightening, competition, cord cutting, automation, etc
Disney is about to do the same at ESPN.
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Nope, you missed reality entirely. What has really happened, is people who are less exposed to screaming video advertisements start to no longer accept that intrusion into their existence. The less you see video advertisement the more irritating they become, think exactly and I mean exactly like hitting your head with a hammer. You need to keep doing it to become adjusted to it, you know, brain damaged ;D. It feels so good when your stop, they any attempt at starting it up again is resisted.
People are well
Meh, it doesn't really bother me (Score:2)
Re:Meh, it doesn't really bother me (Score:4, Interesting)
I do get a little annoyed when a YouTuber puts 3 ad breaks in 9 minute video
I solved that by subscribing to YouTube Premium. Yes, I already used ad blockers before, but they don't work everywhere, while paying does. Besides, I figured out YouTube is the video streaming site I watch the most, with Netflix being a distant second and Prime an even more distant third, so why suffer? It's been months and IMHO it was, and remains, worth every penny.
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Listen to Spotify free, 3 30 second ads in 10 minutes.
There's going to be a new ad backlash shortly, if advertisers thought ad blocking was bad, there's going to be a reckoning as people shift away from "free, ad supported" services that pull this crap in favor of services that are not ad supported, but instead community supported (think Patreon.)
Re: Meh, it doesn't really bother me (Score:2)
I was not aware you could specify the ad break. The feature must appear at a specific subscriber level. Ive uploaded video and never had the option. Which is often why the ads appear at the most unscripted times. If they knew where to break them, why wouldnt they fix their editing so it doesnt cut off mid sentence? I had always assumed youtube used number of views as a metric to determine how many commercials, how many ad breaks, and if they could be skipped.
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Re:Every industry is going through this (Score:4, Insightful)
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In all honesty, the current AT&T is really the hollow shell of a telecom company having it's profitability eroded by "entertainment" acquisitions. Like really, RoosterTeeth (under Warnermedia) couldn't possibly be profitable and it seems like it's run by people who are more interested in personal OC fanfics marketed as anime, and meme stuff.
The same will happen to CBS-Disney-Fox-Marvel , NBC-Comcast-Universal in the US, and Bell Media in Canada. They will be forced eventually to cut loose their entertai
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You really think that is going to happen? I have a bridge to sell you.
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Re: Every industry is going through this (Score:2)
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it sure seems like a recession.
Well, duh. That's because it IS a recession.
Make it illegal to work, recession follows! (Score:1)
These COVID-19 lockdowns were practically designed to cause a recession. All of us IT sector employees don't feel a thing, since we can just work from home, but the rest of the economy is totally fsck'd!
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I think life support is an accurate analogy. Remove the stimulus spending and unemployment benefits and you'll see the true bottom. I don't think we're halfway done with the spending either. Job losses are nearly level with job gains in the latest data; plenty of people will still be filing unemployment claims in the months to come. Wait until the states start needing bailouts to pay for unemployment.
The "unemployment rate" everyone quotes is still a lowball, it's lowering from people being consider
Re: for a booming economy.... (Score:3)
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it sure seems like a recession. first Disney with 28,000 employees, then united with another 16,000, and here we have AT&T with 6000. curious how all of these companies somehow increased earnings after the corporate bailout, only to turn around and gift their CEO's with opulent bonuses before kicking their employees to the curb.
I'm more used to hearing "AT&T created 10,000 jobs" or "15,000 jobs were lost at AT&T" -- switching to the passive voice as if to exculpate the company -- the jobs were just lost somehow, no one knows how, no one takes responsibility.
No problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Just give all those ex WarnerMedia employees a truck, climbing gaffs and a roll of fiber cable. And have them install broadband in under-served communities.
This isn't anything new (Score:5, Interesting)
For those who haven't been keeping track, AT&T has been laying off ( or rebadging ) employees in considerable numbers every quarter for several years now.
It's so common, those who still work for the company ( close to reaching retirement numbers in case you're wondering why ) have become numb to it and don't worry much about it any longer. It's really not a matter of if, but when.
The crazy part is the company is just fire-bombing entire groups / organizations without any thought of what those groups did. More than once have entire groups vanished only to field questions later from the executive levels about why work isn't getting done.
Execs: Why is my phone ringing off the wall ? Why is $project on hold ? We have a deadline to keep ! My bonus is on the line !
Reality: You laid off all the groups with the expertise who were working those projects. You refuse to throw any funding at it and you refuse to train anyone else to do it. You simply think everyone else can absorb all that work with no funding or headcount while still clinging to that ludicrous idea that it will magically get done by what was an already unrealistic deadline. Good luck with that.
So, while AT&T laying folks off might be news to some, it certainly isn't anything new.
The only thing I can say to those in the recently acquired organizations:
Welcome to the way AT&T does things.
Don't expect the layoffs to ever stop.
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Re:This isn't anything new (Score:4, Interesting)
I find this kind of rot is going on in more companies and more sectors than you think. It's easy to say, "Look at the shitty telco", or any other type of organization that typifies this stuff, and think it's an isolated problem. And to be sure, some companies have it worse than others. But to me it all seems like symptoms of a deeper human tendency, which get encouraged by problems in the culture at large.
I have a broader range of recent work experiences than anyone else I know. More than 10 gigs in the period 2010-2020, I've never stayed more than 2 years at a job. I've worked at international conglomerates, established midsize companies, tech startups, mom & pop businesses. Jobs where I used my education and jobs where I hid it. Jobs where I've drafted $10,000 contracts with white people, and jobs where I've competed with Mexicans and Ecuadoreans for $1 tips. I've yet to find one I felt was worth keeping once I figured out how the company operated. Expertise doesn't get valued, and the people with the expertise certainly don't get valued. Nepotism gets valued... and that's at the "good jobs". The lower-paid jobs don't even make pretenses about exploiting you. But it seems more incompetence than malice to me. Eventually, there will be a blowback to the economy at large. Probably when all the economic stimulus and unemployment payments run out.
Last year, I realized the "success" of the economy was in some part an illusion, a scam, and we would probably have Great Depression-level economic problems within the next 10-15 years. Too many problems in too many places, and you can only hide them for so long. I think the corona virus shock is probably enough to precipitate it. We've been given a morphine shot of stimulus to ease the pain until the election, but what happens after that wears off will be... interesting.
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Jobs where I've drafted $10,000 contracts with white people, and jobs where I've competed with Mexicans and Ecuadoreans for $1 tips.
Jobs where I've drafted $10,000 contracts, and jobs where I've competed for $1 tips.
Adding the race/nationality into your argument just clouds your message and starts people re-evaluating the whole post to see if there are any other secondary agendas in your message. Everything after that sentence I read through a filter of "is he still talking about race inequalities or not?"
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It was to highlight the range of workplace cultures I've experienced. There is no "still talking" about racial inequality, because I was never talking about that in the first place. Believe it or not, every mention of race doesn't need to be a call for whatever "secondary agenda" you're insinuating. The differences can be assessed from a detached standpoint, or just appreciated for what they are. Except, apparently, by some readers. I'm not inclined to obscure the realities or dumb down my argument to cater
Re: This isn't anything new (Score:2)
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My org ran into this. They cut a bunch of clerks, so now programmers are doing the clerical work, and some are not very good at it. So now they have expensive slow clerks. Jeenyus!
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In three years the corp I have enjoyed working at for a number of years has gone from having good budgets we could spend on what we needed with little resistance from finance, and were able to add headcount (with reasonable justification) etc, To: Budgets that have so many layers of approval, even for small spends like office chairs and patch cables it's near impossible to get anything. Unable to backfill positions as people leave, at best we're allowed to hire a contractor in place of an FTE that left. Gue
Hurr durr (Score:2)
Consolidation provides more efficient goods and services thanks to the invisible fist of the Free Market
Of course when you all cut your standard of living because you can't find full employment, you won't be spending your hard earned money on premium cable subscriptions.