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Brian Steinberg
Senior TV Editor
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Getty Images CBS News will lay off about 6% of staffers, according to a person familiar with the matter, in the latest round of cost cutting under new management at Paramount Skydance.
The staff reductions — about 60 to 70 in all — come after Bari Weiss, editor in chief of CBS News, articulated a plan to make CBS News more relevant to younger, digitally savvy generations, which may entail recalibrating the traditional deference given to the bread and butter operations of the business — linear TV programming.
Employees were informed of the move Friday in a memo from Weiss and CBS News President Tom Cibrowski.
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“It’s no secret that the news business is changing radically, and that we need to change along with it. New audiences are burgeoning in new places, and we are pressing forward with ambitious plans to grow and invest so that we can be there for them. That means some parts of our newsroom must get smaller to make room for the things we must build to remain competitive,” the executives said in a statement. “But these are very hard choices and today is a difficult day.”
It was not immediately clear what areas of the business and what shows were affected.
The cuts are smaller than previously anticipated. In February, word emerged that the news division might eliminate as much as 15% of the staff. Discussions around layoffs and staff reductions were said at the time to be fluid, and a timeline for putting them into place — if that decision is final — was seen as early as March and as late as May.
Weiss told staffers at a town hall in January that she would press to update internal processes. When considering stories, staffers should stop thinking “about which show will pick it up” or “what hour it will air on linear television,” said Weiss, but rather about “how can we produce the most revelatory stories for an audience that expects the news immediately and on demand. And for younger generations for whom ‘streaming’ and ‘social” are simply: TV and the news.”
Weiss isn’t the only senior news executive grappling with how to reach modern audiences. CNN has unveiled a subscription-based streaming service that is supposed to give mobile viewers more choice in how they watch the Warner Bros. Discovery outlet’s newsgathering. NBC News has launched several streaming products built around flagship properties such as “Today” and “Dateline,” as well as a daily live-streamed outlet that relies on anchors such as Tom Llamas and Hallie Jackson, among others. Fox News has put new emphasis on audio and its Fox Nation subscription service that relies more heavily on lifestyle programming.
CNN and NBC News have enacted layoffs in recent months. CNN CEO Mark Thompson has made no secret of his desire to place new focus on news products for mobile audiences, while NBC News had to restructure itself for an era in which there is no revenue from MS NOW or CNBC to help bolster its finances. Those two networks were spun off into a separate company, Versant, along with the bulk of NBCUniversal’s cable portfolio.
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