MTV News Is Shutting Down as Part of Paramount’s Mass Layoffs
Key takeaways
- Paramount is slimming headcount by 25%
- The company missed expectations in its earnings report and slashed dividend payouts
- End of an era for the 36-year-old news company
It’s the end of an era: MTV News is no more. First started in the 80s and hosting a string of celebrity and high-profile political guests, Paramount has hammered the final nail in the MTV News coffin by laying off all remaining staff. We’ve got what happened below and how the markets reacted.
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RIP MTV News
Paramount has slashed 25% of its domestic job roles in the MTV Entertainment Studios, Paramount Media Networks and Showtime divisions. The news comes after Buzzfeed and Vice Media announced they were shutting down their news departments.
MTV News is famous for breaking the news of Nirvana frontman Kurt Kobain’s death in 1994, gaining massive popularity for its coverage of pop culture news. In 2017 MTV News suffered as multiple writers lost their jobs, with Paramount wanting to focus more on video content.
It’s been a tricky time for Paramount. Earnings per share were way down on estimates, coming in at 9 cents a share instead of 17 cents. Revenue was $7.27 billion in comparison to an anticipated $7.41 billion.
The silver lining was that it added more subscribers: it gained 4.1 million in the last quarter, bringing its total to 60 million and above the 58.7 million subscribers forecast by analysts. Advertising revenue for TV media declined 11% year on year. For these reasons, Paramount decided to cut its cash dividend from 24 cents to just 5 cents a share.
Paramount shares were down 0.4% in premarket trading on Wednesday and the stock has slid 10% this week thanks to the dire earnings report. On the earnings day, it tumbled a massive 27% and was the worst performer in the S&P 500.
The bottom line
In all fairness, MTV News was well past its heyday, but the news is sad for Gen Xers and Millennials everywhere. It’s also a worrying sign for streaming services that have felt the pressure of late to get new subscribers and remain profitable. Whether Paramount can recover is yet to be seen, but we’d imagine the exec board is clinging to those subscriber figures as a lifeline.
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