• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, March 7, 2025

In the early months of any year from January through March, some layoffs and reductions have been fairly common in media companies. After all, who really wants to announce layoffs around Christmas? Not the best publicity-facing message for any company.

While some of this activity is normally part of any business process, recent cuts made among media companies -- especially in their news TV divisions -- may now be more eye-opening.

Earlier this week, Walt Disney Co. said it would be reducing jobs at ABC News by 200, with cutbacks at Disney Entertainment Networks. ABC News in particular will be hit hard, with its data-driven digital news brand 538 being shuttered, among other cutbacks.

Overall, that represents about 6% of Disney's workforce, which on the surface doesn’t seem all that bad.

No doubt the overall cord-cutting marketplace that affected linear TV networks can be highlighted as one reason -- especially with regard to yearly legacy pay TV cord-cutting of around 10%.

Perhaps of greater concern is the activity around President Trump -- in particular, the settlement (after a lawsuit) against ABC News, which agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump’s presidential library in response to a defamation lawsuit.

This involved ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion the President-elect had been found civilly liable for the rape of writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump was found liable last year of sexually abusing Carroll.

There is another lawsuit -- a $20 billion one by Trump against Paramount Global's CBS News -- demanding that it must release a full, unedited “60 Minutes” interview with then Democratic Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris.

Trump says the interview was deceptively edited to benefit the former Vice President ahead of the election.

Still, reports say that CBS probably isn’t taking the ABC concession route, but instead will fight it.

Apart from this, there are business-focused revenue changes when it comes to mainstream linear TV news networks -- and how this affects MSNBC and CNN. Those networks have had layoffs and in MSNBC’s case, now part of a spinoff with other NBCUniversal cable networks -- largely due to cord-cutting.

Of course, all this seems to have little effect on the leader, Fox News Channel -- which touts 100 new advertisers coming to its platform.

No matter. Trump continues to make not-so-general threats to go after many TV and media news organizations.

In a late February Truth Social post, Trump vowed to "sue some of these dishonest authors and book publishers, or even media in general," arguing that they make up stories about him and "a big price should be paid for this blatant dishonesty."

So if you are news editor, beat reporter, desk correspondent, marketing or ad sales executive, does this affect your day-to-day work?

Yeah, that’s where we are.