It looks like the end is near for the dinosaurs formerly known as the news divisions of the Big Three — at least two of them anyway. Hard on the heels of layoffs at CBS came a serious ax-wielding at ABC, resulting in the staff cut by more than a quarter, the diminishment of its foreign bureaus and a number of prominent correspondents let go, including Brian Rooney. Here’s the New York Times on their plight:
If “Good Morning America” or “World News” look any different in the coming weeks, it might be because ABC News is employing nearly 400 fewer people.
Earlier this week, ABC News, a unit of the Walt Disney Company, largely completed one of the most drastic rounds of budget cutbacks at a television news operation in decades, affecting roughly a quarter of the staff. The cutbacks promise to change ABC both on- and off-camera.
For some employees, like the longtime Los Angeles correspondent Brian Rooney, Friday was their last day. Mr. Rooney said his contract expired at “exactly the moment when they needed to shed an enormous amount from the payroll.” In an e-mail message, he compared it to “standing looking straight up when the bomb dropped.”
Yes, that’s the ticket: in the name of “lean and mean” — the same cliche we’ve been hearing in the canyons of Sixth Avenue since the Time-Warner merger back in the eighties — wreck your news operation, give the public less and hope that somehow the bottom line improves.
Ask former Time Inc. exec Jerry Levin how well that worked out.
That’s Jerry, smooching AOL chief Steve Case as they consummated perhaps the worst merger in corporate history: the AOL Time Warner disaster, the rotting hulk of which is still stinking up Rockefeller Center for miles in every direction.
Maybe all these once-storied outfits were doomed anyway, but it’s hard to argue that the insane lust for “transforming transactions,” a reliance on corporate consultants like McKinsey & Co., and a willingness to cheapen the product by shedding good people and retaining the fawning courtiers and palace intriguers, hastened their demise.
NBC, you’ll be thrilled to learn, is in a strong position because, after all, it has an established cable arm headlined by this guy:
The lamentations continue:
For viewers, the effects will be felt on the individual broadcasts, like “World News with Diane Sawyer,” which lost two of its six senior staff members to buyouts. They will not be replaced.
In the future, more segments will be reported, filmed and edited by jacks-of-all-trades, called digital journalists, internally. They may lack the polish that a traditional four-person crew can provide, but they are much less expensive. Sometimes two of the digital journalists will team up for reports.
“We are now, as a work force, becoming much more flexible,” said Jon Banner, the executive producer of “World News.”
And thus the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.
Morale is very low, according to some of the dozen ABC News staff members who agreed to be interviewed for this article. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by ABC to speak publicly.
People are “walking around like they’ve been punched in the gut,” one of the employees said, referring to people still with jobs.
Mr. Westin acknowledged in an interview on Friday that “this is a difficult time for everybody at ABC News, not least for the people who are leaving.”
“At the same time, we really are looking forward to the future,” he said.
Yeah, right.
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