Recession effect: After big tech, media behemoths Walt Disney, Warner Bros, others start cutting jobs

Days after the big tech firms like Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft laid off thousands of employees globally, it's now the big media corporations undertaking job cuts.

According to an Axios report, the media industry is hit by cost-cutting measure that would include layoffs as the ad market slows down. In less than two years, media would be cutting jobs, with the first time being because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reportedly, CNN chief Chris Licht warned employees last week that the network would see more layoffs beginning next month. The parent company, m,eanwhile, Warner Bros Discovery has continued to lay off staffers, in part to alleviate the debt created by the merger that created the new firm earlier this year.

Another media major, Paramount Global, which is the parent to CBS, MTV, VH1 and a slew of other networks, began to cut jobs last week, mostly in the ad sales department.

The Walt Disney Company has also announced layoffs, a freeze in hiring and measures to cut down costs in the face of an upcoming recession and company's continued struggle with rising streaming costs.

Last month, Comcast's cable unit laid off employees shortly after which its entertainment arm, NBCUniversal also decided to cut jobs.

This would media's biggest round of layoffs after the 2008 crash and the COVID-19 pandemic. Tech companies have laid off about 75,000 employees. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, cut 13 per cent of its workforce, which translated to 11,000 jobs being slashed. Twitter laid off about 3,500 employees globally. In India, Twitter laid off 90 per cent of its employees, leaving just a dozen to remain.