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Disney/ABC TV has begun making long-feared layoffs as part of a broader restructuring of its broadcast business, with rumors swirling that bigger moves—including a possible sale of ABC—are coming.
Deadline first reported the staff reductions on Thursday, saying they could impact up to 200 employees across Disney and ABC properties. An ABC source with knowledge of the situation said that the cuts will hit upward of 40 of its employees on the East Coast and still more out west.
Multiple people at ABC told Splinter that there is a widespread belief at the network that the belt-tightening could be tied to a prospective sale by its corporate parent.
Disney's broadcast division, which includes ABC and its local TV stations, is suffering from slumping ad rates and new competition from streaming services. The network's top producer, Shonda Rhimes, creator of Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and How To Get Away With Murder, decamped from ABC for Netflix in August.
Will pride goeth before the fall?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gaaark on Sunday October 15 2017, @12:06PM (5 children)
I generally don't watch TV, but my wife does: last night she was watching 'reality' TV on Spike: I wished I'd timed it. It seemed like 4 minutes of commercials for every 2 minutes of 'show'.
Why aren't people watching TV anymore?
Duh!?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @12:43PM
... hmmm..... .. .... . .. .
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday October 15 2017, @04:14PM (2 children)
I generally don't watch TV, but my wife does: last night she was watching 'reality' TV on Spike: I wished I'd timed it. It seemed like 4 minutes of commercials for every 2 minutes of 'show'.
Why aren't people watching TV anymore? Duh!?
Are you saying your wife is an outlier? If she's representative of American viewers, then while I cannot answer why they're interested in such programming, it does stand to reason that there's many such people who actually like that stuff and are willing to watch it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @05:34PM (1 child)
Hey, if people like to spend their time watching commercials on TV, more power to them. But the rest of us would generally prefer more actual content, which is one of the reasons why cords are snapping off as fast as they are.
Seems the management at these stations respond to massive drop in viewership over commercials by adding more commercials to make up the shortfall of revenue.
And the cycle continues.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 16 2017, @02:32AM
This is because the execs. at these networks have their heads firmly shoved so far up the ass of the "the show exists solely to cause ad views" monster that they can not even fathom that people might actually stop watching because of too many commericals.
Plus, they all operate like it is 1975 and there are only three (maybe four) channels anyone could even watch, and there's nothing else to do (i.e., no computer games, no internet, etc.) and so they think people will just watch out of sheer fear of boredom, so with a "captive audience" they can just shove more ads, and there's nothing the viewer can do about it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday October 15 2017, @10:01PM
Even Disney is opening their own streaming service, and yanking Disney druff from other services.
Clearly they see that the cord cutters have it right, and nobody is going to be watching the same repackaged politically correct crap the networks are churning out. They've decided to dump those shows and the baggage that goes with them and concentrate of capturing the minds of children and getting their parents to pay them directly for the privileged.
Broadcast (cable cast) networks are going to disappear. Netflix/Amazon/Disney type streaming providers are going to rule the day.
The word has gone out: Quickly discard this baggage while some american Cellular/Cable provider is dumb enough to pay big money for it (again).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.