Discovery Axes 80 Staffers
By Anne Becker -- Broadcasting & Cable, 12/7/2006 8:41:00 PM
Discovery has laid off nearly a third of its Discovery Education division, cutting some 80 people. The cuts were a result of redundancies and inefficiencies created within the division after Discovery acquired some seven companies in the last 18 months, according to a Discovery Communications spokesperson.
Discovery Education, whose main product is a school-based video educational service, will employ about 200 staffers going forward. The division, whose products are distributed in about 70,000 schools, has expanded over the past year and a half, launching new products including broadband homework help site Cosmeo.
As a result, the division has bought up several smaller companies, both educational video programmers as well as technology providers. They include educational audio-video provider United Learning, test assessment service ThinkLink Learning, homework helper Academy 123.
“We are still committed to education,” says the spokesperson, who confirmed the layoffs. “There is still a big investment there, but there were some redundancies.”
The layoffs come as Discovery’s new president/CEO David Zaslav spent time at the company’s Silver Springs headquarters this week, meeting with senior executives to discuss his vision for the company.
Expected to take up his post at the company early next year, the current NBC senior exec said at an investor conference Tuesday that Discovery’s portfolio of niche cable networks should strengthen their brands, rather than broadening out just to grow ratings.
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