Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Lean and Mean

One of our fine trade magazines tells us:

Walt Disney will lay off about 175 people at its ABC television unit beginning Wednesday, the result of an internal review discovering that many positions were unnecessary because of new technologies and redundancies as a result of acquisitions, insiders told The Hollywood Reporter.

The layoffs amount to about 2 percent of the unit, which employs 7,600. Insiders say the layoffs will largely hit the eight owned and operated TV stations housed in Disney's ABC Television Group. The company has eight owned stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh Durham and Fresno. ...

Here in the 21st century, you can never slip enough people the axe ...

On a related note, a Disney animation staffer last week told me how she came back from family leave and got notice of termination, and I ran into a Frozen animator at the grocery store who had animated his last scene on the picture two days before. He related:

I knew the job was temporary when I started. Disney is paying me through the beginning of September, so I'm happy about that. ...

It always good to have something to be happy about, even if it's two or three weeks extra pay as you wade into the unemployment line.

2 comments:

Pete Emslie said...

Can't say I've ever noticed the Frozen animator section at my local grocery store... (Sorry, I couldn't resist!)

Steve Hulett said...

It's right next to the frozen vegetables

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