By Ryan Nakashima
LOS ANGELES (AP) --Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., the movie studio subsidiary of the Japanese electronics maker, is laying off nearly 250 people and eliminating nearly 100 open positions in an effort to cut costs.
Chief Executive Michael Lynton and studio co-chair Amy Pascal announced job cuts of 3.5 percent of the studio’s staff worldwide in a staff memo sent out Tuesday afternoon.
“Our studio remains profitable, but over the past five months, the deepening global financial crisis has begun to impact some of our lines of business, such as television syndication, DVDs and advertising sales,” they said in the memo.
“These economic effects have, regretfully, made it necessary to take the step we had hoped to avoid, and worked hard to minimize: reducing our headcount.”
Less than 150 people will be laid off in the United States, most in Los Angeles, along with less than 100 people overseas. Nearly 100 open positions will not be filled.< /P>
The announcement follows other cost cutting moves made in October by the Culver City-based studio, which distributed “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” in January and the James Bond flick “Quantum of Solace” in November.
In October, the studio moved to reduce overtime, travel and executive benefits to cope with an economic downturn. But conditions have worsened since then, Lynton and Pascal said.
According to industry association, The Digital Entertainment Group, U.S. home video sales and rental revenue fell 5.5 percent in 2008 to $22.4 billion, despite a near tripling of Blu-ray disc sales to about $750 million.
The market is down from its peak of $24.9 billion in 2004, with a slowdown caused by the maturing DVD format accelerated by a pullback in consumer spending.
In January, Sony Corp. predicted its first full-year loss for the fiscal year to March since 1995. A month earlier, the company announced it would cut 8,000 of its 185,000 jobs around the world , plus 8,000 temporary workers who aren’t included in the global work force tally.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More