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UPDATES Layoffs After Sony Pictures' Best Box Office Ever Worldwide
As an insider told me just now, "This follows communications with the employees of Sony Pictures going back several months about the challenges facing the entertainment business and the need to adapt in order to be successful in the future." Again, these layoffs follow Sony Pictures' all-time best box office performance ever. Among the specifics I've learned:
- Approximately 450 people are expected to be affected by these layoffs;
- This represents just over 6 ½% of the current workforce (of about 6800 people);
- Also about 100 currently open positions are expected to be closed;
- The notifications are occurring in stages, with most being done by the first week in March.
This email went out to staff today:
From: Michael Lynton and Amy Pascal
Sent: Monday, February 01, 2010 2:58 PM
Subject: Transforming the StudioDear Colleagues,
In our article in The SPE Reel in December, we spoke about the shifting landscape of entertainment and its impact on the economic model at the heart of this industry. Despite the records our studio set at the box office, we’re not immune from these forces, and we said then that costs needed to be controlled as part of a sustained and strategic effort to remake Sony Pictures for the future.
Since that time, in all-hands meetings and small groups, our division heads and executive team have been in touch with many of you to talk in more detail about the transformation of the studio and the kinds of changes being considered.
Last week, the first steps towards the creation of a new operating model for our studio were taken in our home entertainment division and the IT department.
Today, we want to let you know, in a timely manner, what will be involved in the crucial – and difficult -- next phase of this process.
In several stages, we will have a workforce reduction, with most of the notifications taking place by the first week in March. It will affect each of the studio’s divisions, with the majority occurring in home entertainment and IT, and in the United States.
We do not have final numbers or specific dates for all reductions now, because decisions regarding proposals for certain international offices are pending. Local laws will be governing a consultation process with employees in those locations.
The decision to take this step was difficult. But it’s being done in the context of a strategy designed to help us safeguard our competitiveness and chart our own course through these troubled waters.
The need is clear: from the growth of online piracy, to the social media effect on the performance of films, to the way people have changed how they watch television and acquire DVDs. The business is going through a rough period of trial and transition, and we have an obligation to take the steps necessary to get through it.
As we said in December, we are grateful to everyone at Sony Pictures for helping us meet the challenges of this time in our history from a position of strength. And we are confident that the changes we’re making, as difficult as they are, will keep us on a path toward greater success in the future.
Michael and Amy”
In addition, there's a video message on the employee website discussing the changes underway:
Michael Lynton: “Amy and I have spent a lot of time thinking and talking and worrying about the impact that this has on people, these layoffs; we understand that they’re very, very difficult. We also, though, have to look to the future and make sure that the people who we do work with every day have a very good work environment…and that the environment that we’ve created collectively, as a studio together, is the best possible one moving forward.”
Amy Pascal: “Our industry is affected by two things: it’s affected by the economy, of course, and it’s affected by technology….Over the last two years, it’s changed people’s DVD buying habits, which has had a huge effect on our company and the industry at large…..We are going through a painful time now, and the next couple of months are going to be challenging for everybody but…everything that makes Sony unique and special – that is not going to be lost in this.”
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That’s what happens when all you have is Spider Man.
It’s managment. Bad management. IThere seems to be A LOT of “co-” jobs at this studio – including “co-chairman.” There are like two people doing the job of one, especially at the highest executive level. I do not see that at other studios. Is cost savings a real priority? Start getting rid of one of the “co presidents” and make the remaining person actually work a lot and maybe they’ll save some $$? Just saying…
Re Former SPEer’s comment:
They’ll just double down and greenlight THE UGLY TRUTH 2: THE WEDDING
I don’t get it. I’m a movie fan. I know nothing about Hollywood, I just have a defined interest in the product. I read this blog every day. I’m not an idiot, I have a Stanford MBA. (Though, perhaps I just outed myself AS an idiot with that declaration.)
Question: Necessity is the mother of invention. We sent a man to the moon because of Kennedy’s announcement that it WOULD happen. We then found a way to get Apollo 13 home, because we had to. Necessity is the mother of invention.
What precludes David Geffen, Steven Spielberg, and whoever else, to pay some eggheads at MIT and CIT 25 bucks an hour to find a way to watermark DVD’s so they can’t be uploaded. So either there’s a tracking code to identify that people, one that can’t be hacked, or that there’s just a scrambling thing going on. It’s easy to say, you can always find a way around it, but just like IT powers hire the hackers, you pay the smartest people in the world to keep finding a way to watermark things (and yes, more than 25 an hour), it will bring the DVD profits back up.
The piracy issue for Home Entertainment really isn’t as big as they make it sound. The fact is, the studios make it sound like every movie that gets pirated is equal to one lost sale of that film, at full retail price, no less. The reality is that most of the instances of piracy of a film that has already left theaters are people downloading films they would NOT otherwise buy. Studios like to cry foul with an extreme number, but everyone knows that the real number is less than 50% of what the studios claim.
As far as the watermarking, the piracy that effects the HE group are non-DRMed digital copies of films that is readily available (or soon to be) on DVD somewhere in the world. Watermarking consumer product would be an incredibly difficult task, as it would require serialized coding on each and every DVD, as well as some form of registering of each copy sold to the specific consumer. Imagine buying a DVD at Best Buy and being asked to give out personal information (like your name and contact info) so it can be associated with with the serial code on the DVD you just purchased, in case you encode and upload.
The other piracy that effects the HE group comes from “internal” sources, like hired vendors who take a master DVD they have been hired to replicate and use it to sell replicate and sell product on their own. It would be very hard to watermark those items, as these vendors need to have access to the unwatermarked files.
You bring up a great point here; the root of much trouble in the damaged DVD industry is the fact that there’s been such little done to truly watermark and track the sales of DVD’s. DVD’s should, under current necessity, be registered to the person who owns it. Once the barcode is scanned, that watermark in turn registers under the person’s name who purchased it. If a person wants to sell his/her DVD’s, they should have to transfer the title of it (might make people a little more wary about giving away/selling DVD’s).
Academy screeners are tracked according to the person who receives it, and thus deters giving the DVD away/pirating it. Why don’t we implore the same tech in mass-produced DVD’s? Pay the college brainiacs to devise a practical method of doing this. OR, how about one of these brainiacs take advantage of this problem and devise an exact model that’s sellable to these large studios and distrib companies? Crazy all of these people have to lose their job, many of whom only know how to do that job.
I don’t get it-
There are two types of pirates- those who are fans and want to share movies, and people who want to make a profit. The people who want to make a profit all live in South America, Asia and Africa, where our law can’t touch them. So, water marking won’t do a whole lot of good.
At any rate, piracy is not really hurting the film industry. Avatar is the most pirated movie ever. Piracy is at best a scapegoat and at worst an excuse to lay people off.
Honestly, it isnt pirated DVD’s that are the issue. Studios are making less films and earning bigger profits. This is because they generate their revenue from tentpoles such as TRANSFORMERS, HARRY POTTER, PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN, SPIDERMAN, IRON MAN, etc… So when studios make less films, their is less work out there. The studios are realizing that they dont need as many people as they have been using to turn a profit.
However, after a few more years of nothing but Blockbuster, studio tentpoles, I think that the indie scene will creep back up, and studios will begin buying and distributing those films again when the audiences begin to crave something new….its all a big cycle.
It’s ironic that theater attendance is up along with box-office $$ (2009 biggest year ever)…but DVD sales are flattening/declining. Who would have ever guessed this?
You know the one thing that can’t be pirated? Going out to the movies and watching the magic on a fifty-foot high screen in an auditorium full of strangers. It happens every weekend all over the world.
Also, while piracy is an issue, it’s not as bad as people think. A lot of these people pirating movies wouldn’t be paying full-freight anyway. Still, people who steal are scumball thieves who deserve no mercy.
Anyway, I’d love to see the real numbers on Sony’s motion picture biz to see what’s really going on here. I’ll track down and see if the 10Q has it broken out (I doubt it, since the movie biz is notoriously opaque).
Hopefully another news outlet will have more details.
I haven’t bought a DVD since joining Netflix. And frankly, I don’t ever want to again. I already own over 200 DVDs and it’s a pain finding a movie in my collection. It’s a pain when discs get scratched. And it’s a pain having to return a disc you rented.
DVDs need to die completely. Every movie should be streamable any time, any place. This the future. This is 2010.
The industry needs to stop complaining and clinging to out-dated business models, and start innovating. Get with the times, or get out of the effing way.
Sony increased its in-theatre marketibg group and went from last to first in that area, and it has paid off dramatically at box office. From mega standees and banners, such as for “2012″, to lenticular one-sheets, we as exhibitors eagerly await their materials for the are clever and entertaining and attract eyes.It seems the other studios use only vanity head shot materials of the stars, and today, stars are not important- Concept is the name of the game. I hope the execs understand this part of their business increase and leave it alone.
If Michael took $1 million off of his salary, and Amy took $1 million off of hers, think how many jobs that could save…
About 10
The salaries might not save all that much, but reducing the stupid expenditures would certainly mitigate things a bit. For example, just after last years layoffs, they send out custom paper weights (that had some kind of lame corporate message statement) to every remaining employee on the lot. They also spend a fortune on off-site training classes for VP level and above (ask any Sony Employees how to Energy Up!) and conferences.
I worked on a Sony show, and one year later, received the corresponding paperweight. I thought they were cleaning out their attic.
C’mon, let’s get real here… if all of the so-called fatcats did, in your eyes, the “right thing” (salary givebacks to save more jobs), it would never come close to making a dent in the long run.
A business enterprise is created to make money, not supply jobs. Somehow a lot of people in this country have swerved into the notion that companies are there to solely do the latter. It’s complete balderdash! If it was even remotely true and even moral, the likes of Michael Moore would be employing hundreds of people with his pile of loot – but he’s not. Why not? It’s not moral.
Don’t get caught up in populist envy, it will never help you.
I’m not an economist. I can barely keep my checkbook balanced. Could someone please explain how Sony could have its best year ever and still need to make layoffs? I mean in real terms, not the kind of jargon that movie studios use to, say, “Avatar” is the tops at the box office without adjusting for the difference in ticket prices.
You sort of answered your own question. In real terms, Studios tout their “best year ever” off of gross revenues but their bottom line returns will never be mentioned. At the end of the day they have lousy net margins – 6% or far less than that. DVD sales accounted for a lot of the fat studio profit. Selling DVD’s for $19.95 (albeit retail price) on a cost of .50 cents (or less, I am told) was a whopping huge profit center. This is now being eroded with the likes of Netflix, Redbox and many others creeping in. With the business headed for digital downloads and the damage of rampant piracy, they’re taking a big hit.
Their movie division made money but Sony is a much bigger corporation which has been tripping itself up continually, and in any case the projected revenues are down as a result of the DVD dropoff.
No-one who’s had ANY contact with the studios over the last five years can be surprised by this delayering. I welcome it (though obviously it sucks for those affected). It is already starting to make my life easier as I have less layers of execs to deal with.
I would agree that this “delayering” is a good thing if the execs were the ones being asked to move on. The Execs (VP level and above) are the ones sticking around (except of course, the ones who were let go last week) and the “grunts” (Exec Director down to Coordinator) are the ones who are going to make up this 450.
For years, everyone has known Sony (and the HE group) is totally top heavy.
Sony would be unique and special if they WEREN’T laying people off.
I love how in all these articles they talk about how the layoffs wlll make the “company” stronger and better. Notwithstanding what Alito and his compatriots have to say, a company is not a living thing. Give the people you are firing their dignity, say it is a hard moment and move on. But do not excuse by talking about the benefits to a company.
Think about it… what happens when a corporation announces layoffs? Their stock price goes up. These types of statements are for Wall Street, not your average joe. Layoffs do benefit a company and it would be stupid on a company’s part not to bring that up. It sucks, but that is business.
Meaning, there’s nothing particularly unique and special about you, so get lost. You’re disposable.
Welcome to the (Brave) New (Darwinian) Normal.
Deep.
I didn’t notice in the P.S. either of them offering to take any pay reduction, not even a 6.5% pay reduction… Must be hard on them too, seeing as the combined salaries of these two exceed $ 5,000,000.
Best year ever for Hollywood and the reward is? You guessed, those in the salt mines receive new year’s pink slips as bonus!
Nice to know Amy and Michael were able to put their bickering aside long enough to make this decision and put out this memo and video.
Are either Michael or Amy taking a pay cut? You know, to share the burden?
How can Sony have their all-time best box office performance ever, yet talk about the ‘rough times’ and ‘troubled waters’ of their business and industry?
At last, I won’t be wallowing alone in misery any longer.
I guess my lay off last year was only the calm before the storm.
~
Coat
By the sounds of this, it seems like their business plan is only for the year or so ahead. A large corporation with massive resources didn’t anticipate falling DVD sales over time and was unaware of changing viewer habits?
Tough economic times are a good
excusereason for big companies to “streamline” or to implement a “workforce reduction”.The use of the word “difficult” four times seems a bit much. We get the message, even if it’s thoroughly BS. Did they lay off the copy editors? What, no thesaurus? P.S. Love you Nikki
Getting rid of people from the IT department – always a good idea.
Hi Nikki, Just a Thanks for providing such entertaining soap opera stories on the entertainment industry. Your site was great before but with the added staff it’s improvement with more info is obvious. All this done while keeping the info free. Thanks again.
Boom! There is the problem (see TODD). I’m not saying that Nikki should charge, but we have become so accustom to this “Economy of Free” on the internet that we forget that someone (mostly the people behind the scenes) needs to be paid for these services. In this case, I’m sure that Nikki/MMC.com can cover the cost of this website with the advertising they sell, however it also doesn’t cost millions of dollars per day to keep her company running (like Sony pictures). Like JOE mentioned a few posts earlier, majority of the revenue on these movies comes from DVD sales, and because people demand “free media”, the product will begin to suffer, and unless millions of people are watching it, you won’t get many advertisers to spend the high numbers it costs to make “good” content. So you can forget about anything niche. Basically, people better start ponying up in some way, or more jobs will go bye-bye, and then the content pipes will shut off after that. Then you and your families can all go pop some popcorn and gather around the old computer and watch the latest Fred video…enjoy.
Sincerely,
Basic business practices & economics 101
P.S. – That being said, Michael and Amy SHOULD be taking pay cuts.
No one buys DVDs anymore. The future is streaming movies directly onto your TV or computer. The DVD market profits allowed for investing in $15-20 million dollar movies by the studios, but that has evaporated because…..no one buys DVDs anymore. The tentpole movies will always be profitable, but what we’ve lost is the mid-tier movies. They just lose millions of dollars. That’s why Sundance doesn’t sell lots of movies anymore. You can cry and moan about it, but that’s the way it is.
How many DVDs have you all bought lately? See?
I buy DVDs to add to our film library – same as I buy books. Its interesting that this issue indicates these works are temporary – or disposable. To see or read something once – and move on to the next… doesn’t anybody keep anything anymore?
I do when blockbuster sells them 3 for 20 bucks.
I buy DVDs all the time. Never downlaod, never purchase pirated copies. I love my DVD collection. I have no desire to download onto an iphone, ipod, or other ridiculously small screens.
Sadly, the majority of “youngsters” think it’s their right to pirate everything because the technology allows them to.
Oh please. I’m 35. Our parents copies VHS tapes for us, and did you not tape songs off the radio? Seems different than watching a movie streaming for free, no? It’s so not different. You didn’t make copies of a tape on a dual deck stereo? Same thing.
Instead of suing each other into oblivion, why are sites like Quicksilverscreen.com showing perfect copies of all the movies out in theaters right now, yet allowed to operate? It’s a major site, and there are several out there that aren’t just like, the kill another one, another weed pops up in their place type sites. They’re huge sites that should be sued into oblivion.
I’m 48. Like you, we certainly made recorded copies off the radio, VHS and the like but “copying” in our day was for personal use only or a very minimal distribution amongst friends. What we have now is an instant broadcast to anyone that wants to see it. That’s a huge difference in the ratio of who bought what and who got a freebie.
Last year I had a movie with an overseas DVD release date starting in Germany and in one day of that, the entire film was all over the place. We protected it as much as we could but once that spigot was opened it became “free” to everyone. Not just your few pals you allowed to have a copy back in the day, but all over the world. It just takes that first DVD copy to let the flood gates open.
I have no idea what it cost me and my producing partners in revenue but I can tell you it derailed a lot of our plans going forward and that was quantifiable.
Buy ‘em all the time…and I’m as digital as you can get (iPhone, Mac, blah blah blah). I like having a library. Of course I’m over 30, so…
And Sony just had its best year EVER!
All of this is an inevitable product for a studio whose goal is to supply content that looks good on the electronics divisions product, not make compelling and enjoyable films and TV shows.
Assuming Julie & Julie doesn’t sneak into the Best Picture Nominees tomorrow, the last Sony developed film that received a Best Picture nomination was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2002 (Capote in 2005 was MGM developed) and before that, it was As Good As It Gets in 1997. That is an amazing record of ineptitude.
If you don’t make good movies, your studio isn’t going to make the money it should.
I wonder how much money “Movie Studios” left in peoples pockets when they chose to make crappy left-wing anti-war movies while the country was at war instead of attempting to create great movies like “They Were Expendable” (and dozens of other examples)?
What a bunch of maroons.
Is this kind of nonsense really necessary? Who asked for the completely irrelevant–yet still cretinous–political stuff?
I think the answer is obvious. The movie studio’s chose “political stuff” instead of making movies that had a chance of making money.
Billions of potential profits thrown away so they could appear politically correct at parties.
I don’t buy DVDs, I prefer streaming solutions from Netflix or plain ol’ HBO for movie watching. What I have trouble buying from SPE is that DVD sales are the problem. They managed to bring up every red herring in this business: piracy, changing attitudes towards tv (read: people watching/doing other things), low DVD sales, etc.
What is “the social media effect”? Bad reviews are now more readily available than ever?
How about mismanagement? How about not being to pick a winner for the box office? If you look at Sony’s top 10 highest grossing pictures they only have 1 within the last 2 years, and 2 within the last 3 (source: Box Office Mojo). Sony has never had a Best Picture Oscar winner.
I can’t expect executives to take a pay cut, that’s just not what execs are for – they’re chiefs, leaders and should be compensated accordingly. Of course, they should also be held accountable when the time comes (except at NBCU).
What Mike and Amy do have right is that the ’studio’ needs transforming. The whole structure needs to be lean and mobile, ready to move and change at a moment’s notice. It needs to trim off some of the layers and cut through the water like a shark.
And unrelated to the Sony news today, but the man who laid off 500 people from New Line Cinema 1-1/2 years ago got a raise today of $3.5 million! Congratulations Jeff Bewkes … King of the scumbags!
Remember: it’s Sony ENTERTAINMENT. Part of a much larger whole. The electronics division has been hammered over the last 24 months by the global economic slowdown, the now-it-can-be-admitted wholesale failure of the PS3 platform and a number of other things leaving SPE as one of the few bright spots in the portfolio. Unfortunately, that often means — for divisions in a multi-national like SPE that are outperforming the whole — they get handed elevated target numbers and are then forced to make disproportionate cost cuts to make up for other divisions mistakes/failures/shortcomings. Sucks, but that’s business and never forget: just because people may love movies in a way they don’t love toasters, it’s a bottom-line/share dividend issue at the end of the day.
Last year, Sony had their best year ever at the box office with $3.5 billion worldwide. Let’s say all in, they make 7-8 billion a year in revenues with all their other divisions. That is still in the neighborhood of approximately 10% of Sony Corporation’s revenues. The issue is not management at the studio. It has actually been very strong under Michael and Amy. The culprit here is Big Sony can’t make products in their core electronics business that capture the imagination and excite consumers. In a weak economy, that lack of innovation coupled with recessionary buying starts to really cripple a company and the pressure on Culver City becomes even greater. When Sony touts it had a great year, that is true to a point. All the studios brag about marketshare when it runs in their favor. Transparency on profits from films is another thing altogether. They never say we spend 100 and will make 8 on our investment. I think Sony Pictures actually had a pretty decent year, but Sony Corporate needs more than pretty decent and I am sure they want better margins. Every studio is cutting back. Sony didn’t cut as much as others last year, so now the other shoe dropped. A lot of good people were laid off at Disney – most recently under the guise of restructuring under Ross – and so it goes at Universal, Paramount, Warners, everywhere in town. The lack of DVD revenues is a real problem. The larger catalyst is that each of these companies is a behemoth. Mergers and acquisitions and growing bigger for the sake of being big has finally taken its toll. The business is contracting – and leaner is likely better and healthier for the survival of these studios.
This is really the failure of Blu Ray as a format. I have a Blu ray player and with the up-converting the difference on all but a few movies is negligible. Better but not $5 better. We’ve skipped the next gen of dvd on gone straight to streaming. I don’t bother renting the anymore.
Remember, these are studio staff jobs that are being cut. They have nothing to do with people who actually make movies.
is piracy really the cause? what’s changed in the last 2 years regarding piracy? the redbox thing seems more likely the cause. was sony doing redbox? and isn’t redbox gonna get shut down? so if redbox goes away, don’t the studio’s get their DVD money back? what numbers do they really have on piracy?
also, we’re in a serious recession, of course people don’t have as much money to spend on DVDs. that’s a temporary thing. the studios seem to be describing this whole DVD thing in permanent terms. i keep hearing “the model” has changed.
more importantly, why can’t hollywood figure out a solution to direct distribution via the internet. eg, netflix streaming, etc. if they can circumvent the DVD itself, they could stop piracy and eliminate the redbox problem. i don’t buy this whole cultural difference argument. if you make people pay for content, no matter what age they are, they will pay for it if they want it. there may be a cultural bias, but culture changes.
and lastly, make better films. i think there’s something to the whole tentpole argument. the people running studios are focused on the bottom line, they are afraid to do anything interesting. if good stories can’t find a place in hollywood, they will find some other place to bubble up.
my sympathy for those who lost their jobs.
Anyone notice how this release was done in the afternoon before the Oscar announcements, ensuring that the news cycle discusses the Oscars, not this move? Pretty savvy.
Am I missing something? How can Sony pictures be coming off an amazing 2009 BO, yet STILL be cutting jobs?! Yes, it’s a changing industry, but it’s not like they can’t afford to just move around employees to where they need them. Is this a strictly cost-cutting/profit-expanding move?
“Hi, everybody. We were stupid and short-sighted. In our meetings to fire a bunch of you, we came up with the “DVD” excuse. Pretty creative, huh? Have fun being unemployed. For us, it’s back to long lunches on the company dime, looking at carpet samples, planning a vacation the first week in March to avoid this mess, and extensive navel-gazing. Thanks for all your hard work, even though this is really your fault.”
I can’t wait for Amy or Michael to have problems with their computers, scream for IT to come fix it, and their assistants remind them they canned all the gone help.
“The need is clear: from the growth of online piracy, to the social media effect on the performance of films, to the way people have changed how they watch television and acquire DVDs.”
I just can’t tell if this sentence makes grammatical sense or not. What’s the need? The need for what?
Any out there who can help?
Because, as you know folks, we’re in a difficult time with a difficult landscape and that make things very — oh what’s the word? Oh yes — difficult.
Assuming “the need is clear” means the need to downsize for more profits.
Maybe Sony can rehire some of its newly-fired employees as temps so they can infiltrate social media and plant tons of positive buzz a la “David Manning” a decade ago with A KNIGHT’S TALE
IT, really? Unless they had the world’s most bloated IT department, this seems like a mistake.
I prefer DVDs to streaming, because I like to watch on my TV, and I don’t have a fancy TV – its still SQUARE-ISH! Not everyone has a brilliantly fast internet connection or the desire to sit in front of a monitor. Also I like to do stuff like exercise while I watch movies.
However, I mostly Netflix, largely because few films that come out are GOOD enough for me to add to me collection. I just bought Star Trek and Hurt Locker. Most DVDs I buy are older ones, like Annie or Thelma and Louise that are classics that you want to have available for a long time and whenever you want to watch. Most of my Netflix list is made up of film or TV that came out some time ago going back to the 40s. I do add in to that films that came out in the past year that I would never pay for a movie ticket or take the time to leave my house for, but I’ll watch while I paint my nails or something.
Make better films, Hollywood.
Amy and Micheal are Lying (not on purpose of course)…
A.The iPad just came out HELLO! No one buys DVD’s any more…
B. More than likely they were ordered to “trim the fat” to boost the stock numbers HELLO! All of Sony’s Executive “compensation” packages are more than likely tied to the stock price…Simple Math… Cut Overhead… Increase Share Holder Value… Increase your Bonus! WIN WIN WIN!
C. No Fortune 500 executive ever lets a stock drop or recession go by without at least one “trim the fat” stock bump exercise…
So I hope most of those folks take that severance package and enjoy watching Sony’s stock go up in the short term and help insure those executive bonuses remain at “industry standard” (aka Robber Baron) levels…
Amy and Micheal doing give backs to protect jobs PLEEEEEEEESE…Just because they give money to Democrats does not mean they have to act like them.
Sony isn’t really laying off IT staff. They are actually OUTSOURCING the entire IT department to Mumbai, India.
It’s a move meant to maximize profits for owners of Sony Stock and has nothing to do with needing to cut cost (as has been noted :
Sony had record breaking revenues in the last year).
Using DVD revenue losses and the recession as reasons is just a way to take the focus off of the fact the IT jobs are being OUTSOURCED!!! Sony movies and products should be boycotted!!!
They are laying off IT and to make matters worse, they are asking these people to stay for months while their jobs are taken to India! They’ve hired H1B Visa holders as managers in IT because the H1B Visa holder doesn’t want to leave the US so they will do whatever is asked of them and that includes giving American jobs to TCS.
I have a huge collection of bought DVDs (over 1000). I’ve never pirated, don’t have a netflix account and don’t stream video. I’ve bought about 10 dvds in the last year and a half. The simple answer for me is the state of the economy. If I weren’t worried about losing my own tech position every day, I would still be out there buying dvds instead of waiting for movies to come to cable. Quite simply, a lot of people in today’s environment are not spending money on things that aren’t a necessity. DVDs are not a necessity. Food, housing, bills.. that’s where the casual dvd buyer’s money is going.
Does piracy hurt dvd sales? Sure, but not as much as the studios would like us all to believe.
Sony laying off IT personel is a mistake. I come from a company with partially outsourced IT and it is miserable. The few techs left are over worked to the point of wanting to leave the company. The users are miserable, their problems don’t get solved and they get the run around on almost every call they make. While it may look good on the bottom line, productivity and a sense of well being are long gone.
I work in a disc replication and packaging plant. It takes 15 minutes to walk from one end to the other and I see people every day that I work with that I do not recognize, it is that big. There are giant buildings full of strange looking plumbing, machines, and technology, pushing out boxes full of discs onto trucks to DC’s and then to stores. All this to get a consumer to sit and watch a movie. At the end of a chaotic day I go home and to relax I hit the play now button on my laptop with Netflix thru a cable to my old crappy TV. The picture could be better but my family and I still laugh and cry just the same. My kids don’t care, they just say “can we watch a Netflix tonight?” Electronic delivery, what a concept!
The music industry lost its way 8 years ago. The video industry is in for the same now and no one believed it could happen just like the record guys. Piracy is one reason but time has been lost to social networking (among other areas) and money to mobile phones. Paying for digital downloads or streaming is not going to make up the difference. You want to cut off the pirates, charge $1 for a DVD and release it one month after the theatrical release. It will not affect the people who enjoy the theater experience and it will get everyone to stop buying the pirate copies. And for a buck, less and less people will waste time for a download.
it hasn’t helped Sony’s quest for more revenue by quietly revenue sharing with many (but not the biggest retailers)accounts. no payment made to Sony until the dvds and bluray sell to consumers, and Sony covers all shipping costs and covers any theft.
what will WalMart and Best Buy say when they learn they weren’t offered the rev share deal !!!
it’s a real shame this is happening even though this is the only SONY company which is making a profit!!