Warner Bros. celebrates Emmy victories by laying off 100 employees

Like just about everyone else in the world, Warner Bros. Discovery is still looking for $3 billion in cost-saving initiatives. After trying everything, from canceling movies and TV shows to removing 200 old episodes of Sesame Street, the company returns to its tried and true method of firing employees. Thankfully they haven’t become desperate enough to cut CEO David Zaslav’s reported $246 million compensation package. They’re tightening our belts here, and the tightening begins with people that make much, much, much less than $246 million. May they never get so desperate.

Now before anyone gets overly emotional about the situation, these layoffs were planned, meaning that this was part of a 30% reduction across the company’s ad sales division. These layoffs were are also part of previously reported exits. They weren’t all layoffs, too. Some were lucky enough to strike a deal with the company by taking severance packages or retiring. And what timing, too. The company just won a handful of Emmys and recently launched an ad-tiered version of HBO. They also recently determined that we, the viewing public, have been paying too little for a such quality entertainment and that we don’t deserve a Batgirl movie.

Who knows what cost-cutting efforts will follow? We have to assume that Zaslav will pull out that giant ledger of his, skip the first couple of pages that list the executives who make the most money and find another couple of Sesame Streets to pull from HBO Max. Of course, they’ll be stuck with annoyed investors if they don’t find the $3 billion. And then what would happen? Could you imagine a world where a CEO who makes a slew of unpopular decisions makes less than $246 million? We shudder at the thought.