NPR Sees ‘Sharp Decline’ In Ad Revenue, Announces 10% Of Staff Face Layoffs

National Public Radio (NPR) announced Wednesday the network plans to cut the majority of vacant positions and slash around 10% of its current staff — approximately 100 employees — amid a “sharp decline” Advertisement revenues

In a Memo John Lansing, the CEO of NPR, broke the news on Wednesday to NPR staff almost three months after promising the nonprofit media group would do its best to. avoid layoffs The network stated that it would be losing approximately $10 million of its fiscal year budget.

“Our financial outlook has darkened considerably over recent weeks,” Lansing wrote in the memo, published by The Hollywood Reporter. “At a time when we are doing some of our most ambitious and essential work, the global economy remains uncertain. As a result, the ad industry has weakened and we are grappling with a sharp decline in our revenues from corporate sponsors.”

According to the outlet the company employs more than 700 people, including approximately 490 newsroom staff and 230 programming staff.

“When we say we are eliminating filled positions, we are talking about our colleagues — people whose skills, spirit and talents help make NPR what it is today,” Lansing signed the memo. “This will be a major loss.”‘

Lansing claimed that officials had devised a plan to reduce the $20 million loss in sponsorship revenue for the current fiscal year. But, new projections suggest that at least $30 million is needed.

“The cuts we have already made to our budget will not be enough,” He said that officials aren’t seeing any signs of recovery in advertising space markets.

“Nothing is nailed down yet except the principles and what we know we have to reach,” He said.

It is unclear at this moment which NPR employees may be unemployed. However, Lansing stated that job cuts will not be evenly distributed across the board and vowed to make sure “employees of color” NPR reported that the impact would not be significant.

“I don’t anticipate that it would be like a haircut across every division, because that’s just not management,” Lansing. “Management is about committing to strategy, making tough decisions.”

According to the network, officials would decide which employees would be fired at the end of March.

Over the last few months, multiple media outlets have been making announcements about layoffs.

Vox announced last month layoffs that would affect 7% of its employees, as other companies within the sector take similar steps. Gannett and Spotify have both laid off approximately 6% of their employees, while CNN cut its streaming service CNN+ by a staggering number of employees, and Gannett and Spotify fired hundreds of workers after they joined the Warner Discovery group.

In the same way that thousands of workers are being laid off at technology companies, there are also layoffs at legacy media outlets. In the last few weeks, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft announced their plans to cut headcount by a total of 40,000 employees.

This report was contributed by Ben Zeisloft

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