Disney Entertainment Television Lays Off 140; National Geographic Heavily Impacted

Layoffs are underway at Disney Entertainment Television today. Roughly 140 people are affected, representing about 2% of the total DET workforce.

National Geographic is the hardest-hit brand with about 60 layoffs, or some 13% of its staff. Other significantly impacted divisions include the ABC Owned Television Stations, Freeform, the operational side of the Disney linear entertainment networks, Unscripted, Marketing and Publicity. No teams are being eliminated.

Not surprisingly, Disney’s linear networks are taking the brunt of the staffing cuts, particularly those that do not provide the company’s streaming platforms with highly popular originals such as FX’s Shōgun or ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy that drive viewership and subscriptions.

The layoffs had been planned for months as part of a streamlining strategy at DET, with department heads given targets to hit after a division-wide review. Almost half of the eliminated positions are in Burbank, where the Disney Studios is located, and the larger Los Angeles area; the rest are largely in New York as well as Washington, D.C., where Nat Geo is headquartered.

Today’s DET staff reductions follow a range of other cuts at Disney, which has been working toward a stated goal of at least $7.5 billion in cost reductions since the start of last year. In May, Pixar Animation Studios let go about 175 people, or 14% of the staff, as the animation outfit trimmed its plans for a big expansion into Disney+ series under Disney’s new, more disciplined approach to streaming spending since Bob Iger returned as CEO in November 2022.

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Traditional media companies are going through tough times amid a soft ad market — despite the influx of spending on political ads and live sports — as pay-TV continues to decline markedly and ad dollars are migrating to digital platforms.

A couple of weeks ago, Fox Entertainment eliminated about 30 positions in a restructuring. There also were layoffs at Warner Bros Discovery earlier this month.

At a Wall Street investor conference in May, Iger was asked about the company’s strategy in operating linear networks in an era of pay-TV decline. He said the company is “aggregating greater audience” while “amortizing costs” by running programming across multiple platforms in streaming, broadcast and cable. “We’re doing that across the board, Disney Channel, ABC, National Geographic, and it’s working,” he said. “Now we’re going to continue to see erosion in terms of subs for those businesses, but we’re going to actually continue to drive profitability because we’re managing our costs so effectively.”

Today’s cuts come on the heels of Disney recently netting 183 Emmy nominations for its shows, with some of the top awards performers originating on linear, including FX’s Shōgun and Fargo and ABC’s Abbott Elementary.

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Speaking with Deadline on the day of the nominations, Dana Walden, Co-Chairman of Disney Entertainment who oversees DET, expressed commitment to linear in the context of “our ecosystem of platforms, how they are integrated and how our linear strategy is embedded in our streaming strategy,” while stressing that “it starts with programming best in class content on our linear channels.”

She singled out such multi-platform overachievers as Shōgun and ABC’s 9-1-1 and The Rookie.

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Once a leading brand of YA programming with such hits as The Secret Life of the American Teenager and Pretty Little Liars — and more recently The Fosters and grown-ish — Freeform, one of the Disney linear networks dropped by Spectrum, has pulled away from scripted series, which have been streaming on Hulu, in favor of more modestly priced unscripted fare. The network already underwent significant cuts in the Disney Entertainment Television layoffs last year.

Meanwhile, this is the biggest reduction at Nat Geo, which followed a close examination of the network and its affiliated business’ output. Like Freeform, Nat Geo has steered away from scripted over the past year, with its nature-focused unscripted originals streaming on Disney+.

Speaking at the May investor conference, Iger gave Walden “tremendous credit” for managing Disney’s traditional networks by reducing “pretty dramatically our investment in content specifically aimed at those traditional networks” while investing in some and managing “the traditional platforms networks and the streaming platform seamlessly.”

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Last year, Disney eliminated 7,000 jobs over multiple rounds of layoffs that stretched from March to May as part of its cost-savings efforts.

That led to the consolidation and elimination of a number of DET divisions, including production operations across Disney TV Studios, Hulu, Freeform and FX being put under one executive, Freeform combining development and current, and ABC doing the same with drama development and current. 20th Digital Studio and Disney TV Studios’ Creative Acquisitions unit were dissolved.

Investors have cheered Iger’s cost-cutting push, but Disney shares have retreated significantly from their high mark for the year of $123.74 established in March. They have posted gains in recent days, but started Tuesday’s trading at $93.79.

Iger and company will deliver their latest presentation to Wall Street on Wednesday morning when the company reports its fiscal third-quarter results.

Dade Hayes contributed to this report.