Job losses, big changes coming at NBC News

NBC Universal announced a reorganization Thursday that will mean big changes for NBC News and MSNBC-TV, including job losses and consolidation of many operations at NBC’s New York headquarters.

NBC executives said they planned to slice the news division’s budget through attrition, buyouts and layoffs — the exact number had yet to be determined — and elimination of duplicate newsgathering processes. Much of the impact will be felt at its cable network, MSNBC, many of whose operations will move to the home office at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan from its headquarters in Secaucus, N.J., which will close.

The moves are a major part of a larger restructuring to save money at NBC Universal, whose entertainment programming has fallen in the ratings after ruling the TV world for several years. The highly profitable news division had been widely speculated as a target for cost-cutting, but the network will also revamp its prime-time entertainment schedule as part of the initiative, dubbed “NBCU 2.0,” which aims to save $750 million by the end of 2008.

General Electric Co., NBC Universal’s parent company, reported last week that third-quarter profits rose 6 percent. It said its performance was dragged down by a weak showing from the NBC unit, where profits fell 10 percent from the same quarter last year.

‘We intend to ride the wave’
The news division hopes to improve efficiency by consolidating operations under fewer roofs, NBC News President Steve Capus said in a series of interviews.

“We need to be greater than the sum of our individual parts. We’ve got all these wonderful businesses,” he said, ticking off NBC News itself; the network-owned and -operated stations; MSNBC-TV; NBC’s financial channel, CNBC; its Spanish-language network, Telemundo; and Telemundo’s local affiliates.

“They’re all leading in many ways, and yet it’s not enough,” Capus said. “You can either ride the wave or you can drown, and we intend to ride the wave.”

That wave will carry many of MSNBC’s roughly 500 Secaucus-based personnel to 30 Rock, where two floors will be gutted and rebuilt as a modern digital home for NBC News, MSNBC-TV and MSNBC.com’s East Coast operations. Others will be transferred to CNBC’s headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

Capus pointedly denied industry speculation that MSNBC would be targeted for heavy cuts. If anything, he said, he wants to recharge the main news division with the cable operation’s innovations, which have yielded gains in both the ratings and its journalism.

“The operation that we have at MSNBC cable is vibrant and on the leading edge of the news all day every day,” he said. “I look forward to that energy and excitement coming into NBC News at 30 Rock.”

The move means that some operations, duplicated at 30 Rock, Secaucus and Englewood Cliffs, will merge, notably guest booking and graphics.

NBC, MSNBC and CNBC producers and bookers often compete for the same sources and guests, but “I envision a day now where people who have been involved in production of the ‘Today’ show will also be involved in the production of MSNBC, and vice versa,” Capus said.

Similarly, some correspondents now report only to individual shows, rather than share their reporting across the network — “the sort of thing that gives executives gray hairs,” Capus said.

“It makes no sense in the year 2006 to have individual businesses doing the same exact work, and in some cases even competing against each other in those areas,” he said.

Still, he acknowledged that “cost cuts are part of it. We say that without apologizing.”

“We need to run a smart, efficient business,” he said, because “if you can reduce costs in certain areas, you end up having money to invest in expanded coverage.”

Some recent developments support Capus’ contention. Even as it has been planning to cut costs, NBC has been pouring new resources into its core hard-news operations. For example, it has doubled its investigative staff in recent months and hired several field reporters, in addition to opening bureaus in Beijing; Beirut, Lebanon; Bangkok, Thailand; and New Orleans.

Rank-and-file unrest predicted
Even so, former NBC correspondent David Hazinski predicted that many front-line producers would bristle at the changes, especially the centralization of graphics and the mandate that reporters and crews report across the network, rather than for specific programs.

“They’ve been trying to do that for 20 years because it makes for a lot more efficiency,” said Hazinski, who is head of the broadcast news sequence at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism. “But the problem is the producers of those shows want to design the show as they want it for marketing purposes, so it’s a constant conflict between the shows and, basically, efficient operation.”

Hazinski said it was troubling that even the top-rated and most profitable network news division was under pressure to make changes.

“The numbers are coming down. And ironically, NBC is, to me, the one network that’s done best at leveraging its correspondents and its anchors across multiple outlets — the Web, MSNBC, CNBC, the NBC main network. They’re very good at that,” he said. “But the numbers are being reduced to the point where even they have to pay attention.”

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