Turner cuts Court TV staff

Nearly 50 employees laid off, more cuts to come

By MICHAEL LEARMONTH

Turner Broadcasting has laid off nearly 50 employees at the newly acquired Court TV and said more jobs would be cut at the network in the coming months.

Turner is in the process of sifting through the 400-plus employees of the net, seeking redundancies in areas like finance, PR, legal, information technology, affiliate relations and accounting.

The layoffs are part of the integration with Time Warner unit Turner Broadcasting, which acquired the 50% in Court TV that it didn't already own from Liberty Media for $735 million in May.

All affected employees were offered severance and some were offered equivalent jobs in Atlanta, where Turner is based, but none so far have accepted.

As an independent network, Court TV maintained a larger staff and infrastructure than one owned by a larger media conglom with other cable assets. Turner, which owns TNT, TBS, CNN and Cartoon Network, has all that infrastructure in place. It's unlikely that many creative professionals, either in marketing or programming, will be eliminated.

This first round of cuts focused on affiliate relations, PR, finance and accounting. Cuts in other departments, such as IT, sales, legal and operations, will occur over the next 60-90 days.