General Electric Co.’s media and theme park subsidiary, NBC Universal, this week laid off about 500 employees — about 3 percent of its work force of 15,000 — as part of a plan to trim $500 million next year, a person familiar with the situation said Thursday.
Several correspondents and other staff were laid off at NBC News. Positions were cut in roughly even proportions across NBC Universal’s ad sales, theme parks, movie studio and cable networks, said the person, who requested anonymity because she was not authorized to speak publicly.
The moves included putting the nightly CNBC show “The Big Idea” with Donny Deutsch on hiatus, said Brian Steel, vice president of CNBC public relations.
“Given current economic conditions the feeling was that now is not the right time to do a ‘success’ show five days a week,” Steel said. Deutsch will now work on a monthly special and appear regularly on CNBC and the “Today Show,” he said.
Among those laid off at the news division, which had 1,200 employees, are Dallas reporter Don Teague, “Dateline NBC” West Coast correspondent John Larson and Mark Mullen, who served as Beijing Olympics bureau chief.
The staff reductions are in line with the corporate goal of a 3 percent budget cut next year.
They are part of the cuts NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker announced in a memo in October, saying “it has become evident that the decline in consumer confidence and spending will impact our operations” and that the company “must take steps now to prepare for these new economic realities.”
Zucker had asked each business unit to focus on reducing promotion expenses, cutting discretionary spending such as travel and entertainment and outside consultants and trimming staff costs. He also looked for savings by putting major purchases through the corporate sourcing department.
The laid off employees are to leave by January. Several have accepted buyouts and voluntary retirement packages.
The cuts came the same day Viacom Inc., owner of MTV Networks, BET Networks and Paramount Pictures, announced it would trim 850 jobs, or 7 percent of its work force, freeze some senior-level salaries and write down certain programming and other assets.
Viacom’s moves are expected to generate pretax savings of $200 million to $250 million next year. The company will take a restructuring charge of $400 million to $450 million, or 42 cents to 48 cents per share, before taxes in the current quarter, which ends Dec. 31.
Writers of “Conclave,” “Say Nothing” Win Scripter Awards
The authors and screenwriters behind the film “Conclave” and the series “Say Nothing” won the 37th-annual USC Libraries Scripter Awards during a black-tie ceremony at USC’s Town and Gown ballroom on Saturday evening (2/22).
The Scripter Awards recognize the year’s most accomplished adaptations of the written word for the screen, including both feature-length films and episodic series.
Novelist Robert Harris and screenwriter Peter Straughan took home the award for “Conclave.”
In accepting the award, Straughan said, “Adaptation is a really strange process, you’re very much the servant of two masters. In a way it’s an act of betrayal of one master for the other.” He joked that “You start off with a book that you love, you read it again and again, and then you end up throwing it over your shoulder,” crediting author Robert Harris for being “so kind, so generous, so open throughout.”
In the episodic series category, Joshua Zetumer and Patrick Radden Keefe won for the episode “The People in the Dirt” from the limited series “Say Nothing,” which Zetumer adapted from Keefe’s nonfiction book about the Troubles in Ireland.
Zetumer referenced this year’s extraordinary group of Scripter finalists, saying “projects like these reminded me of why I wanted to become a writer when I was sitting in USC’s Leavey Library dreaming of becoming a screenwriter. If you fell in love with movies, or fell in love with TV, chances are you fell in love with something dangerous.”
Special guest for the evening, actress and producer Jennifer Beals, shared her thoughts on the impact of libraries. “If ever you are at a loss wondering if there is good in the world,” she said, “you have only to go to a... Read More