Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) on Wednesday began issuing pink slips to workers within the company’s broad cable networks business.
The number of job cuts are less than 100, and mainly involve those who work in the legacy Discovery Networks part of the company, which includes Animal Planet, the Discovery Channel, American Heroes, Travel Channel, OWN and Science Channel.
An unnamed source told trade publication Adweek that the layoffs were intended to help WBD “operate more efficiency,” and were part of broader trends within the entertainment industry, particularly among companies that operate linear cable TV networks.
Joe Flint, a media and entertainment reporter with the Wall Street Journal, was the first to report the layoffs on Monday, posting to his account on X (formerly Twitter) account that there were “job cuts coming this week to Warner Discovery’s cable networks group.” The newspaper did not publish a story on the matter.
Deadline, a trade publication owned by Penske Media, published a story on the matter Wednesday afternoon, that restated most of what Flint had written on social media. The Deadline story claimed it was an “exclusive,” and didn’t mention that Flint had broken the news two days earlier.
There has been rampant speculation within the media industry that WBD will spin off some, or all, of its linear TV unit in order to focus on its more-lucrative streaming and studios businesses. The company has declined to say whether it is moving in that direction. Comcast, which competes against WBD in television, film and streaming, announced plans last year to spin off most of its cable networks into a separate venture called Versant.
On Monday, the Walt Disney Company announced it was laying off hundreds of workers around the world, including staffers involved in corporate finance, marketing and content production.
