Executives at Warner Bros. Discovery are reportedly swinging the ax again, with HBO personnel hit hardest as the left-wing media giant continues to grapple with a perfect storm of plummeting advertising revenue, two Hollywood labor strikes, and merger-related cost cutting.
Insider sources told The Wrap that the latest round of layoffs has “decimated” HBO’s corporate PR team, which recently saw several high-level departures — including industry veteran Chris Willard, who left the company this week after 14 years.
Layoffs among HBO’s legal and production division also took place earlier this week, an insider told TheWrap.
Warner Bros. Discovery, which is the parent company of CNN, has been showering its employees with pink slips as executives seek to make good on the cost savings promised by last year’s corporate mega-merger. Not even the box-office success of Barbie has managed to save jobs.
Kaitlan Collins and Anderson Cooper appear in a video during the Warner Bros. Discovery Upfront 2023 at The Theater at Madison Square Garden on May 17, 2023 in New York City. (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images)
Turner Classic Movies recently gutted its staff, taking its headcount from 90 people to 20 and prompting an outcry from prominent filmmakers including Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.
CNN saw layoffs last year as the ratings-challenged, anti-Trump news network continued to sink under then-chief Jeff Zucker. The axing of the little-watched streaming service CNN+ was among the first items on executives’ agenda.
Like other Hollywood studios, Warner Bros. Discovery is contending with cratering advertising revenue as corporations reduce spending on commercials amid persistent consumer fears tied to Bidenflation.
CEO David Zaslav admitted this decline was unexpected during an earnings call with investors Thursday.
“A lot of us expected that there would be a meaningful recovery [in the ad market] in the second half of the year and we haven’t seen it, and we’ve needed to figure out how to make up for that,” he said.
The double Hollywood strikes — actors and writers are picketing the studios, with no end in sight — have added more financial uncertainty to an industry already in crisis.
As a result, layoffs are sweeping the entertainment industry in unprecedented fashion, with Disney, Paramount, Netflix, and others shrinking their payrolls.
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