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WarnerMedia slates overhaul that will likely result in thousands of job cuts, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. There was a previous round of cuts in August, which sliced more than 500 positions at Warner Bros. The new cuts, which are part of a drive by the company to reduce its costs by up to 20 percent, will also affect such TV channels as HBO, TBS and TNT. The moves come as WarnerMedia tries to shift its focus toward subscription streaming video through HBO Max, a competitor to Netflix, which has seen a slow start. The app drew 4.1 million subscribers in its first month, while Disney+, which launched in November, has more than 60 million paying customers.
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The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is also getting ready to hand out a sizeable number of pink slips. The Hollywood Reporter says that Canada’s public broadcaster is set to cut 130 jobs as part of a "resizing." While the CBC said a number of positions will be eliminated through "attrition, collapsed vacancies and retirement," around 40 jobs, mostly based in Toronto, would be cut. The cost-cutting will fall on unionized members associated with the Canadian Media Guild and the Association of Professionals and Supervisors union. In an internal email obtained by THR, CBC vice president of English services Barb Williams said that the job cuts were the result of falling advertising and subscription revenues, made worse by the COVID-19 crisis.
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| Dean Baquet |
New York Times editor Dean Baquet may be heading back to the Los Angeles Times, where he served as editor before a clash with the Tribune Company (which then owned the paper) led to his departure in 2006. The New York Post reports that Baquet is at the top of the list of contenders to replace Norman Pearlstine, who is stepping down after two years as LA Times executive editor. In 2018, Baquet turned down a request to return to the paper from owner Patrick Soon Shiong, who purchased it from Tribune for $500 million. The New York Times has a mandatory retirement age of 65, and Baquet turned 64 in September.
McClatchy, which owns 29 daily papers across 14 states (including The Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee and Kansas City Star), launches a wave of layoffs that extends to at least 13 of those papers... The Toledo Blade, which was founded in 1835, is set to shut down on Dec. 31, unless owner Block Communications manages to find a buyer for it... A bill awaiting approval by California governor Gavin Newsom would give local newsrooms a boost. 
Fox News Media issued a pretty sparse release to announce the departure of one of its stars. “Effective today, Maria Bartiromo is no longer with FOX News Media,” it reads.
Brunswick Group partner John Simons has joined CNN as senior director of business & media. He held top jobs at Time and the Wall Street Journal.
WNET, the nation’s largest public media company, names Edward O’Keefe its next president and CEO, effective September 21. O’Keefe succeeds Neal Shapiro, who becomes president emeritus and will retire at the end of the year... The Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, which would empower news publishers and other content providers to defend themselves by mandating transparency for all bots crawling their sites, in introduced in the House by Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) and Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC)... Google gets socked by European Union regulators with a $1 billion fine for using the platform’s dominance as a search engine to illegally undercut competition.
Boston Globe Media acquires InstaTrac, a company that provides subscription-based services aimed at making government information easier to find, track, and understand... AARP names former New Republic CEO and publisher Michael Caruso as its SVP and chief content officer, unifying the organization's portfolio of media, live events and digital platforms... The Fund for American Studies, an educational nonprofit, awards its inaugural Journalism Excellence Fellowships.
