WarnerMedia CEO Confirms More Staff Cuts Coming Soon

The cuts at WarnerMedia are just starting. Friday afternoon, new Warner chief Jason Kilar sent an [...]

By Adam Barnhardt

The cuts at WarnerMedia are just starting. Friday afternoon, new Warner chief Jason Kilar sent an internal memo to staff revealing a pair of executives — HBO Max head Bob Greenblatt and TBS/TNT/TruTV content chief Kevin Reilly — had been pink-slipped due to corporate restructuring. In a recent chat with Bloomberg, Kilar says the cuts likely aren't stopping there, though the executive wouldn't reveal how much of the company's 25,000-member workforce could be laid off.

"The decision had nothing to do with performance in any shape or form," Kilar told the finance mag. "In looking at where we'd like to go and how the company was organized, we had two content organizations, and they both worked on HBO Max. The tough decision I made was to go from having two to one. I think it's the right thing to do for the company in the interest of focus."

While Kilar revealed an additional emphasis will be placed on HBO Max in an expanding digital age, the exec went on to say the company is far from tossing in the towel on its network television business.

"We're an organization that is over 25,000 team members," Kilar added. "We can be world class at a number of things, including cable channels. By any measure, they're very strong businesses. I feel very good about the teams leading the charge, and we are leaning into them. We will be around to serve consumers who want to be served in that manner for as long as they want to be served."

As Kilar points out, people still buy physical home media and likely will for quite some time, just another reason why cable television won't go away anytime soon. "It's not for us to judge and dictate which way a consumer should be served. If we were a startup with five people, we'd have to choose. But we have over 25,000 people," Kilar concluded.

In the memo Kilar released, it was revealed members of the WarnerMedia team will take over the duties left over by the departure of Greenblatt and Reilly. HBO Max content will now be overseen by longtime HBO executive Casey Bloys, who now reports directly to Warner Brothers chair Ann Sarnoff.

Cover photo by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

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