140 employees are being laid off at Disney Entertainment Television. This accounts for approximately 2% of the workforce in Disney Entertainment Television.
The layoffs impacted National Geographic the most severely. 60 employees were laid off from the brand. This is 13% of this esteemed brand’s staff. Other divisions that were impacted included ABC Owned Television Stations, Freeform, the operational side of the Disney linear entertainment networks, Unscripted, Marketing and Publicity. Despite the layoffs, no teams were being eliminated.
As the company continues to move in the direction of streaming, the linear networks bore the brunt of the layoffs. The layoffs had been planned for months as part of Disney’s strategy to streamline Disney Entertainment Television. About half of the layoffs were in Burbank and in the Los Angeles area. The rest are from New York and Washington D.C., where National Geographic is located.
The cuts at Disney Entertainment Television are just the latest to hit The Walt Disney Company in recent years. Since the beginning of last year, Disney has been working at achieving $7.5 billion in cost cuts. This came as activist investor Nelson Peltz fought for board seats and other reforms at Disney. It also comes as former Disney CEO Bob Iger returned from retirement to again lead the company. He has had a quality over quantity philosophy for content creation. All of this is with the backdrop of traditional media facing unprecedented challenges due to changing markets and the rise of streaming versus linear television.
Last year, The Walt Disney Company laid off 7,000 employees as part of its cost cutting measures. It is unknown at this point if there are still future layoffs still planned.
