We all know that the newspaper and magazine industries have been laying off a lot of people. That continues as Sam Zell announced that he's cutting 250 jobs at The Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times.
The total layoffs across all media is said to be at 4,391 in the first quarter this year, which is up by 93 percent from last years' first quarter total of 2,271.
For television the layoffs continue also, as Viacom (VIA-B) seems to be laying off people from its MTV division all the time. Thay layed off more in February. Discovery Communications, which is a cable programmer, also said they laid off a number of people in February. Disney (DIS) did a lot last year.
Of the complete media sector, Television layoffs account for 12 percent of total media layoffs. For movie studios and video, they accounted for another 28 percent of the overall media layoffs.
This is connected to the changing digital world. But I think it's also related to the slow response of the media industry in embracing the Internet more fully.
Digging in and trying to salvage too much of their existing industry is making this a long process that is going to continue for probably several more years at minimum.
The industry seems to be embracing online video as their choice of monetizing their digital strategies. This in itself will make the transformation slow too, as nobody has even come close to figuring out the best way to do that yet.
I think we're still in the early stages of a long process of transformation in the industry that will claim a lot more jobs before they get their footing again.
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