CNN
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Paramount International, the proprietor of broadcast and cable TV networks, introduced Tuesday it’s going to lay off a whole bunch of staffers because the media big seems to be to scale back prices and develop income. The information comes simply days after its CBS community noticed record-breaking promoting gross sales and the highest-rated telecast for the Tremendous Bowl.
The corporate’s chief govt, Bob Bakish, introduced the layoffs in a memo to workers Tuesday obtained by CNN. Whereas Bakish didn’t specify the variety of layoffs, sources aware of the matter advised CNN round 800 workers, or roughly 3% lower of the corporate’s workforce, can be affected. The announcement follows a January 25 memo by which Bakish warned that Paramount International would “cut back our workforce globally” as a part of “our path to earnings development.”
The cuts will influence staffers world wide, with these within the US being notified by the tip of enterprise Tuesday, Bakish wrote.
“These changes will assist allow us to construct on our momentum and execute our strategic imaginative and prescient for the 12 months forward — and I firmly consider we have now a lot to be enthusiastic about,” Bakish wrote.
The layoffs come amid studies that Shari Redstone, the household heiress of Paramount’s dad or mum, Nationwide Amusements, has been in talks to promote her stake within the firm. In latest months, David Zaslav, the chief govt of CNN dad or mum Warner Bros. Discovery, met with Bakish and broached a possible merger between the 2 firms. David Ellison’s Skydance and RedBird Capital have additionally made takeover gives.
Paramount declined to remark for this story.
The media big, which is trying to transition its enterprise from conventional linear tv to streaming, introduced Monday that CBS’s broadcast of Super Bowl LVIII broke ratings records with a staggering 123.4 million viewers, marking the biggest US TV viewers because the 1969 moon touchdown. The community additionally broke promoting gross sales information for the massive recreation.
“We set the high-water mark for advert gross sales for a Tremendous Bowl, and it’s trying like on Sunday we’ll set an all-time viewing quantity with a bit of luck,” Bakish stated Friday in a Bloomberg TV interview.
Paramount is the newest media conglomerate to put off staffers in 2024. In January, the information business noticed cuts at The Los Angeles Instances, TIME and Enterprise Insider, whereas staffers at Condé Nast, Forbes and The New York Day by day Information staged historic walkouts to protest deliberate cuts.