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Fox Lays Off 22 Staffers In Home Entertainment
Now Disney And Lionsgate Laying Off Staff
Job Cuts Planned At Paramount Home Video?
EXCLUSIVE: That’s about 1% of Warner Bros’ total domestic workforce. When I asked about it, Warner Bros Entertainment issued this statement: “As part of the continual review of our business operations, Warner Bros. Entertainment will be undertaking limited staff reductions in our home entertainment and consumer products divisions. The total number of employees and positions impacted by these reductions is a relatively small percentage of our domestic workforce.”
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Oy, gevalt! I work at Disney HE… next week is our turn. I’m sick to my stomach every day. I love my job so much. I guess I wouldn’t care so much if I was like most of my co-workers, who have a screenplay in their desk drawer and are just biding their time until they finish their novel or they’re “discovered.” I feel like I’m in the perfect job and it will break my heart if I lose it. But I can’t control it, so I just have to keep breathing and hope for the best.
Wasn’t Warners one of….THE most successful studios last year (and for the past 9-10 years before that)?? Looks like another case of the big ‘ole G-R-E-E-D.
This is terribly sad, and just further proof that studios like WB need to adapt to the changing market. The future is digital, and they need to work with rentailers and other digital providers to provide content quickly to consumers with minimal hassle.
more Charlie Sheen fall out?
The DVD/Bluray is dead. Time to go online 100%. All the studios are destined to go out of business in this area. It’s only a matter of time before more massive layoffs are announced.
If you work in a studio in this area, get your resume together and start searching. Or go back to school and get some tech. skills.
Go in debt $100K for those tech skills so you can fight H-1B’s for a job that will pay half that, with 80 hour weeks, 24/7 on-call, and the constant threat of outsourcing to India. All the major studios are doing it .
I dont agree they need to go back to school but if I worked in HE, I would certainly be on the hunt, I am surprised studios are not just closing the departments? Who is still buying dvds and why?
Boxed media is sold globally, not just in the states – FYI. The demand is strong in certain parts of the world. Streaming media still has issues domestically, and practically non-existent in most populated regions abroad. DVD/BD will continue to fill those needs.
So, I take it that new sitcom version “Looney Tunes Show” on Cartoon Network didn’t pay off.
No, they got Ashton Kutcher now, so the show may still go on.
Actually Wrong… The Looney Tunes Show is considered a ratings success….
http://www.licensing.biz/news/7234/Looney-Tunes-programme-accelerating-says-WBCP
Ratings for the new-look Looney Tunes Show, which premiered on Cartoon Network in the US on May 3rd, have been strong – more than 2.5 million children tuned in to view the series, achieving a 4.1 rating for boys aged six to 11.
This is further damage from WalMart putting RedBoxes in their lobby. Why buy a DVD when you can rent it for $1?
Alan Horn needs bonus money.
Its wonderful to see the Bush Tax Cuts at work saving jobs. Some of the richest men in the world with the highest salaries control most or all of the Film/TV/ and Media companies. These guys pay less in taxes then they did 15 years ago. Because of their tax breaks the republican tea party tell us they will create jobs. Instead they continue to fire people so they can paid their billions in salaries and continue to pay on a tax rate less then the people their companies just fired.
A lot of these top media people are liberals who are benefiting from these tax cuts. They don’t seem to be taking less. Greed doesn’t have a political party.
Making this political is soo stupid. We should make the poster pay more in taxes.
More to come for WB, mostly in Europe. I wouldn’t want to be on their finance team right now.
Nice juxtaposition of stories on the front page:
#1: Warner Bros. will be the biggest studio of the Summer for the FOURTH YEAR IN A ROW!
#2: Warner Bros. FIRES 50 PEOPLE!
Nice management, suits.
Instead of laying people off, WB should have been more savvy in predicting the ever changing digital market and try to re-purpose some of those jobs into new roles that would most like grow with consumers’ home entertainment habits. This laying people off bullshit just shows us that corporate media power heads have no creativity in handling overhead and being proactive with how they can use their staff. They get paid the big bucks. They should go outside the box and troubleshoot, using the know-how of some of the people they’ve just let go. But no – they’re off most likely to be employed by a WB competitor who gets it.
Way to contribute to the failing economy WB. I know it hardly makes a dent, but it’s the principle I’m talking about. Keep up the mediocre work.
Every single person who says the studios should move 100% digital is obviously not working at a studio. The studios are trying to go digital. And you know what, the margins are really, really small. Digital isn’t making that much money. So if anyone thinks that digital will make up for the loss in declining dvd sales…then they’re stupid.
You’re right. The reality is that the studios will never recover from this, just as the music industry took a big hit with digital and never recovered. The way people consume entertainment has changed, no matter what the studio execs may do to try to and stop the hemorrhaging of profits.
Home entertainment peeps, better start updating those resumes!
Digital distribution, not digital content. Studios need to scrap the idea of creating something new for a new platform and realize that people still want TV and Movies, they just have little reason to go out and purchase it when there are so many other options via Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Redbox…
Blu-ray is Digital, in fact the best in quality. streaming is junk, it is convenient but the quality isn’t there. at least when you grow up and get a nice big HDTV and high quality audio system.
Laying off 22 people is not a big deal(unless of course you are one of them). The studios are always hiring and firing. Departmental needs do shift.
If they repurpose people for digital they would also have to get all those people to take a big paycut. Tape operators can make 30 to 40 dollars an hour and digial encoders make like half or less than half of that
This is not good. All the studios need to find ways to innovate rather than laying off staff. It is not that the DVD is dead it is more that they haven’t turned to solutions like MoPix for digital distribution. http:/www.getmopix.com
Before I comment, you should know that I turned down an offer from Matsushita in 197 something to distribute VHS equipment because I saw no future for home recording and there was no media available. I sure missed that boat!
It’s true that everything will end up in the Cloud, but when? It’s all about bandwidth and folks, there’s still many areas that don’t have enough. As tablets and smart phones continue to proliferate bandwidth will continue to be the main reason the entire entertainment business still uses storage media like DVD’s.
That said, you can bet that all entertainment companies are hell bent for leather to be ahead of the curve on Cloud distribution of media, but Amazon and Google are going to beat them to it.
When you see Google buy a studio, the time will be coming. Until then, bone up on ….what, exactly? The only thing that will change will be the method of distribution. Marketing and production still must happen first.
In case you haven’t noticed, the economy stinks world-wide. That’s beyond all of our pay grades, so just try to keep on keepin on and wait to see what happens.
Not very clever, but probably as good advice as any!
It will go to an all image based industry which means there will be some people in the printing industry that will have to dump a few employees now that they have no orders for DVD sheets as well as Duplicating house etc.
See Reaganomics works, all the (bad) stuff trickles down, just like they said!
More people scratching for compressed wage jobs on Monster and everywhere else. Like a breadline for jobs now!