Disney is cutting hundreds of employees across several TV and film teams as the company focuses on expanding its streaming services.
Employees in the marketing for film and television, as well as TV publicity, casting and development, and corporate financial operations will be impacted by the cuts, a spokesperson for Disney told FOX Business.
The spokesperson said the company will continue to evaluate ways to efficiently manage the businesses “while fueling the state-of-the-art creativity and innovation.”
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The layoffs announced on Monday are part of its ongoing work to find opportunities to operate more efficiently. However, the spokesperson said the company has been surgical in its approach to minimize the number of impacted employees.
Entire teams aren’t getting cut.
It comes after Disney’s ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks announced plans to lay off just under 200 employees in March.
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Those cuts represented nearly 6% of the total ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks workforce, and the majority of the impacted staffers are from ABC News, according to a source with knowledge of the headcount reduction.
Meanwhile, Disney is pushing ahead with its new direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming service, which will be named ESPN, after its successful sports network, as the streaming wars press on.
Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns Max, CNN, and Discovery Channel, Disney, which owns Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN, Amazon, which owns Prime, and Netflix are among media companies vying to dominate the online video streaming market, which took off during the pandemic-related lockdown orders.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DIS | THE WALT DISNEY CO. | 112.95 | -0.09 | -0.08% |
Companies have heavily invested in original content and exclusive deals to bring in more subscribers and gain market share. With many players in the space, platforms have also consolidated streaming services, raised prices, cracked down on password sharing or added ad-supported tiers in order to remain profitable and effectively compete.
Though a specific launch date has not yet been announced, an anticipated date will be announced in late summer.
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