ABC News and Walt Disney Co. entertainment systems are being hit with a 6 % decrease in staff amid shrinking rankings and revenues for standard television.
Employees were told of the reduces Wednesday. The decline of 200 jobs is being made across Disney’s broadcast units, with media suffering the biggest work loss. A majority of the reductions will affect ABC News staff in New York.
Stories of labor cuts have circulated for weeks at the media department, which like another outlets has seen its visitors leave Television channels for streaming platforms.
ABC News lost about 40 people in a square of cuts in October, which even hit the agency’s TV channels for , a total of 75 breaks.  , The decreases announced Wednesday will reach the show’s entertainment systems as well as the announcement section.
Almin Karamehmedovic,  , president of ABC News, said in a statement to staff that the breaks are aimed at streamlining the activity and positioning it for the changes in the Screen environment.
” Rethinking the way we work to future-proof our crew admittedly includes cuts to our incredible staff”, Karamehmedovic said. ” These decisions are extremely hard and now will undoubtedly be difficult for our business.”
No on-air journalists or cables at ABC News did lose their jobs in the cutbacks, according to one man acquainted with the intentions who was not authorized to remark publicly.
ABC News will consolidate the staffs of” Good Morning America” with the afternoon edition of the show known as” GMA 3″, according to the Wall Street Journal, which was first to report the layoffs. The staffs of newsmagazine” 20/20″ and late night program” Nightline” are being consolidated under the ABC News Studios production unit.
ABC News is also shuttering 538, the data journalism unit Disney acquired from founder Nate Silver.
ABC News has long been the leader among evening news viewers with” ABC World News Tonight with David Muir”.
But” Good Morning America”— which has three of the highest-paid news hosts in TV with George Stephanopoulos, Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan — is running behind NBC’s” Today” for the first time in seven years.
In the 2024-25 season,” Today” has a slight edge over” GMA” in total viewers and wins a wider margin among the 25 to 54 age group preferred by advertisers who buy against news programming.
ABC News has also been investing in the streaming news service ABC News Live, which attracts younger viewers but only a fraction of the audience size for network TV broadcasts.
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