The NBC News logo, seen at Rockefeller Center in New York City.
UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Layoffs that NBC News staffers had been bracing for finally got under way at 30 Rockefeller Plaza on Wednesday, with the company confirming around 150 staffers are being impacted by the cuts.
The reductions come as NBC prepares for a spinoff that will, among other things, transfer cable networks MSNBC and CNBC into a new publicly traded company, Versant Media Group, while NBC News remains part of Comcast’s NBCUniversal division. Preparation is still under way for the ultimate launch of Versant — but given that there will no longer be a need for things like shared infrastructure and newsgathering, NBC News has decided to go ahead and eliminate dozens of positions now.
That move also follows smaller, more targeted jobs cuts in recent weeks, such as a round (reported by Status) involving several employees laid off last month from NBC’s graphics department — a resource that both NBC News and MSNBC had been sharing. Today’s cuts make up about 2% of the NBCU News Group workforce, and they’re scattered throughout NBC News.
At the same time, not every NBC News employee impacted by the layoffs will be leaving the company. That’s because there are currently 140 active open roles across the news group, while the company has also confirmed about a dozen of the eliminated positions are being repurposed as new roles.
All this comes as NBCU News Group chair Cesar Conde said in a network memo last week that a marketing campaign is in the works that will pave the way for the new era at the company. “Coming off the successful creation of our new daily podcast Here’s the Scoop,” he wrote, “we are preparing to launch our NBC News subscription service later this year that will feature the best of our coverage and include new premium offerings.
“NBC News is expanding its new Sports Hub, in partnership with NBC Sports, with the NBA returning to NBC, as well as the Milan Olympics, the Super Bowl, and the World Cup on Telemundo. And to support the leading position of NBC News, we will be launching a marketing campaign soon that will reinforce our reputation for rigorous fact-based reporting that is indispensable and accessible across all platforms for all, the first such campaign in modern memory.”
As part of these changes, NBC journalists will no longer appear on MSNBC (which is rebranding to MS Now, for “My Source News Opinion World”). Once that separation is complete, which is expected to happen by year’s end, Versant will start off with around $7 billion in annual revenue, a figure that’s been on the decline in recent years. Comcast, meanwhile, can redouble its efforts on growing businesses like streaming (Peacock), Universal Studios, broadband, and theme parks.
The key point about today’s NBC News layoffs is that they aren’t entirely a byproduct of the broader economics of the media industry. They’re also a direct result of a news operation walking away from the economies of scale it once pursued, benefits of which included sharing everything from reporters to control rooms.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andymeek/2025/10/15/layoffs-at-nbc-news-and-the-painful-math-behind-the-versant-spinoff/
