OWN to Layoff 30

If you don’t know who Oprah is then you’re probably living under a rock at this point. What you may not know, at least not if you work during the daylight hours, is that last year Oprah gave up her popular TV show on a major network in order to open her own cable channel. That station, know official ass OWN (or the Oprah Winfrey Network) is sold as part of subscription cable packages and is also backed by Discovery Communications.

The station just underwent a restructuring event in order to stay lean and profitable. This restructure, which came fairly quickly after creation, put about 30 people out of a job. The reason, pure and simple is low ratings. As it turns out only the most hard-core Oprah fans will pay extra to see her on the screen now that her talk show is off the air. The network recently lost its second talk diva, Rosie O’Donnell from their 7pm time slot, though she is still listed on the schedule for the time being. Other shows on the network include such titles as: Addicted to Food, Are You Normal, America?, Super Soul Sunday and Beverly’s Full House.

There are no details at the current moment about what kind of severance the now displaced 30 full timers are going to get, if anything. At the current moment details about which positions specifically were cuts are not know either, as the company remains relatively tight lipped about the job cuts being made in their fledgling stages of operation.

The only official statement made thus far was gotten by a reporter for the Media Code Blog which is part of the NY Times website. In the generic statement the CEO of the company talks about charting a plan for long-term success, after the obligatory acknowledgement of how hard it is to make ‘tough’ decisions in business. Bear in mind the Discovery Communications has a history of high levels of executive compensation. While we do not have exacts amounts on how much this man makes guessing by the salaries of his contemporaries we can fairly say that he make a couple million a year to make decisions like how many people to out of work.

Of course, OWN is not the only station to cut jobs. Some of you may recall back in 2011 when the BBC cut back on staff. For those of you who do not here is an excerpt from our earlier coverage:

“As part of a restructuring plan, British Broadcasting Corporation, the major public broadcaster in the UK, announced that it will slash about 360 positions at its online operations. The company officials said that they will reorganize BBC Online to achieve a much clearer digital agenda to better service its clients this year. The cuts are also triggered by the company’s plan to cut its budget for its online unit by a quarter, which will be $165 million for 2013-2014, down from $219 million in 2010.”