Media Industry Struggles: 'Broadcasting' Closing, AXIOS Lays-off 50

A slew of cuts announced Tuesday suggest the media industry's struggle to regain the advertising and subscription momentum lost during the Biden era will persist for the foreseeable future.

According to Axios, the rapid rise of AI-riven search engines and an unpredictable economy only threaten to disrupt the ecosystem even further. Publishers are trying to get ahead.

Continued cuts, even amid one of the most unpredictable elections in modern history, suggest media companies can't be saved by a busy news cycle:

• The Tampa Bay Times on Tuesday said it needs to reduce payroll by 20% as part of a wider set of cost-cutting measures. The newspaper will offer buyouts to its roughly 270 full-time employees, it said, which includes about 100 journalists in the newsroom.
• Axios said on Tuesday it's laying off 50 employees, around 10% of its staff, according to an internal memo from CEO Jim VandeHei. It's the company's first sizable round of cuts since it was founded in 2016.
• Future on Tuesday said it plans to shutter the print magazines and newsletters for Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News and NextTV and replace them with one newsletter and a section on nexttv.com.
• GameStop last week said it would shut down Game Informer, the oldest gaming magazine in the U.S., and laid off staff.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ziff Davishas cut a deal to acquire CNet from Red Ventures for about $100 million. CNet — which CBS acquired for $1.8 billion and subsequently sold to Red Ventures four years ago for $500 million — will join other tech outlets like Mashable, PCMag and LifeHacker in the Ziff Davis stable. But the sharp decline in value underscores the perilous media moment.

Meanwhile, two venerable TV trade publications, Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News, will shut down, according to their owner Future Plc, citing the “rapid transformation” of the industry. The Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame will continue, even as the print magazines and newsletters of the trade outlets end.

The outlets long served as a training ground for media and entertainment reporters, and as bibles for the broadcast and cable TV industries, with B&C tracing its print edition all the way back to 1931, when it launched as Broadcasting magazine.

Future says that it will launch a new SmartBrief newsletter and Nexttv.com website in October, though it is not clear what those news brands will look like.

And at Axios, one of the more successful digital news brands, CEO Jim VandeHei told staff today that the company will lay off 50 people, citing the “rapidly changing media landscape.” The company will still hire in what it deems growth areas, but is making cuts now to get ahead of what it sees as big changes coming to the industry, including the proliferation of AI-generated content and aggregation.