In an attempt to try to paint a negative situation into a positive, NBC Universal has announced a new initiative called "NBCU 2.0" that it contends will "drive growth across every business." But while the company tried to paint a rosy picture of how benefitical the changes will be, it is clear that they are being made simply to cut costs. While the company will get an initial savings bump from all the cost-cutting, what negative impact they will have on the company’s media businesses’ ability to compete are unknown. To achieve the "growth initiative," which will cut administrative and operating expenses by $750 million by the end of 2008, Bob Wright, chairman and CEO of NBCU said the company will cut about 700 jobs, about 5 percent of the company workforce. It will "streamline newsgathering operatings of MSNBC by closing its news and production facility in Secaucus, N.J., moving the cable news network’s operation in with CNBC in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and NBC News at the company’s headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Center in New York City. And it will create a centralized news facility at its Burbank, California, offices, to support a number of its news operations at one locale, including Telemundo, its Hispanic network, and California stations KNBC, KVEA and KWHY. The company said it would save money doing this via "resource-sharing among newsgathering units." The company said it is reviewing similar resource-gathering plans at NBC News bureaus around the world. At Universal Studios, a number of jobs and facilities will be consolidated. NBCU did not specifically announced what impact this will have on television programming development, and whether less money would be spent on the number and cost of each TV pilot, but it did indicate that a new business strategy would be developed that "reduces NBCU’s dependence on traditional content distribution methods [television] and advertising models." The company indicated it would be relying more on "bringing content to consumers sooner on a variety of platforms, creating new windows or opportunities in the traditional syndication market, and developing alternative advertising metrics."
MediaWeek
I don’t get how Jeff Zucker is still there when he turned the number 1 network into the fourth place one. I guess it is good to be boss.
