Paramount Skydance is cutting about 1,000 jobs on Wednesday company-wide, telling employees in a memo, “these steps are necessary to position Paramount for long-term success.”
Variety reported that chairman and CEO David Ellison said, “In some areas, we are addressing redundancies that have emerged across the organization. In others, we are phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities and the new structure designed to strengthen our focus on growth."
The publication said most of the job losses will occur in the U.S. and will happen across all divisions, including television, film, streaming and corporate.
The company controls CBS News, Paramount film studio, MTV, Nickelodeon and BET, among others, according to The New York Times.
This is only the start of layoffs at the media company. Another round will target about another 1,000, with the total goal to cut about 2,000 positions, or about 10% of the workforce.
The cuts are expected to be done before the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Nov. 10, NBC News reported.
Ellison and president Jeff Shell want to reduce costs by $2 billion, a goal they had presented before Skydance took over Paramount earlier this year, Variety reported.
“When we launched the new Paramount in August, we made clear that building a strong, future-focused company would require significant change – including restructuring the organization,” Ellison said in the memo on Wednesday.
This is not the first layoffs to hit Paramount. About 3.5% of the company’s U.S. employees were cut in June before the Skydance deal went through in August. The Paramount Skydance deal was worth $8 billion, NBC News reported.
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