Friday, October 4, 2019

Report: The Bloodshed Isn’t Letting Up At WarnerMedia

According to The NYPost, the entertainment colossus formerly known as Time Warner — whose name was changed after its merger with AT&T — has recently axed 49 jobs in New York alone as it eliminates overlap across its HBO, Turner and Warner Bros. units, a state government filing revealed Thursday.

That figure doesn’t include a host of big-name exits connected to AT&T’s restructuring of the division, which kicked off in March, a source said.

The source added that there “could be more” cuts coming. One insider said that since AT&T acquired the firm last year, the number of cuts has been closer to the “high hundreds.”

Cuts have been sprinkled across HBO, Warner Bros. and Turner, sources said, adding that they primarily come from departments like finance and legal.

In July, the company axed 20 ad sales jobs, dubbing them “redundancies.”

This week, Nancy Lesser, a 35-year veteran at the company who most recently was EVP of media and talent relations, stepped down, but her role is not included in the 49 slashed jobs, according to a source.

AT&T began restructuring WarnerMedia in March when Turner president David Levy and HBO’s longtime CEO, Richard Plepler, resigned.

A centralization of the company followed under AT&T exec John Stankey — now CEO of WarnerMedia — who appointed ex-NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt as the chairman of WarnerMedia’s entertainment and streaming businesses.

Inside the company, staffers are bracing for more cuts. “The bloodbath continues certainly through the rest of the year,” a source said, adding that “the morale is lower than Death Valley.”

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