A couple weeks ago, the media world was reeling when CBS News began a round of layoffs that hit around 100 people.
That was bad enough.
ABC News will sharply reduce its news-gathering staff through buyouts and possible layoffs, the company said on Tuesday. ABC employees said they expected the cutbacks would affect 300 to 400 people, or roughly 25 percent of the news division’s work force.
The cuts at ABC, a unit of the Walt Disney Company, are among the steepest ever made at a network news division. A spokesman said ABC News currently employed roughly 1,500 people.
In a memorandum to staff members, the ABC News president David Westin called the cutbacks a “fundamental transformation” for the division that would result in a leaner, smaller organization. “The time has come to rethink how we do what we are doing,” he wrote.
Mr. Westin said in an interview on Tuesday that the reductions were an effort to get ahead of economic pressures squeezing the broadcast business.
“These are forces larger than any of us — business forces, just the realities of broadcast versus digital, as well as financial forces, given the advertising market,” Mr. Westin said.
Here’s the thing: when you cut that deeply, and that drastically, you never go back. Those jobs will never return.
I can’t predict what this will mean for the years to come. But I worked for nearly three decades at one of the major news networks. When I first started working there, my colleagues were legends. The place was full of towering redwoods. Twenty five years later, after several changes in ownership, it was mostly saplings and ferns, with just the occasional leafy oak. They’ve deforested most of the television news business. They may as well just pave it over and decorate the edges with astroturf.
It’s sad, really. And sobering.
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