p2pnet news view TV | Movies:- It’s been called the George W. Bush recession and it’s hitting people and businesses hard not only in America, but around the world.

Now, tragically, another American institution has fallen victim.

“Disney/ABC Media Networks Group will … be implementing new guidelines to ‘reduce administrative costs’,” says Deadline Hollywood Daily.

The story quotes an email from ABC News president David Westin to his division about coming hardships. “We are not immune from the downturn,” he says grimly.

But, “At the same time, the importance of the election and economic stories reminds us how much we have to do to help our audiences absorb and understand what is going on around them,” he states, going on:

“What we need to do — and will do — is to make sure that we have all the resources we need to cover the news.”

Thank Heavens!

To that end, he promises, ABC and the rest of the Media Networks Group are adopting new guidelines to reduce administrative costs, to wit »»»

• All executives are asked to fly one grade below what they’re entitled to. Some have contractual provisions on air travel, and the company is not breaching any contracts. But we are being asked to use our discretion on this.
• All executives are asked to stay in “B” level hotels. I’m told that Travel knows what this means. [Oh! The Horror!]
• Starting immediately, the only business meals for which we will be reimbursed are those with third parties. Any meals (or drinks) with ABC or Disney employees will not be reimbursed. [Noooooo!]
• All non-production (i.e. administrative) travel must be pre-approved by the CFO (in our case, Jim Hedges) in writing. Your finance and operations people can help you with this.
• As of December 1, we will cancel all subscriptions (newspaper and magazine) for executives and production employees and move them to on-line. [Online?!?! This will be AWFUL !!! But Wait >>>>> ] This change will have the added benefit of helping the environment. If there are particular circumstances where you believe this will materially impair your ability to get your work done, you should make your case to your executive producer or supervisorby November 15th. Dave Davis, Kate O’Brian, and Paul Slavin will review these requests and submit their recommendations to me.
• We’re asked to keep any convention or conference attendance to an absolute minimum. Anyone who attends things like NAB or RTNDA, we need to have a conversation. If someone needs to attend, it will be a skeleton crew.
• We’ll forego all holiday parties this year. This means that the company parties in LA, NY and DC are cancelled.
• Thanks again for your understanding and cooperation. I won’t pretend that this won’t be difficult. But, I truly believe that there is a way for us to do this together that will result in a stronger ABC News.

“Wow,” says D’ough in a comment to the story, “those will be huge cost-cutting measures. That’ll save SO much more than trimming those multi-million dollar salaries.”

But, “Nothing in this press release indicated cuts in executive compensation at ABC,” notes in mheister in another post, adding, “The honchos aren’t foregoing a penny of their insanely high paychecks and stock options. All the pain is being felt downstream or downwind or on the lower rungs of the ladder, choose your metaphor.”

It’s tough at the top.

Sigh.

Deadline Hollywood Daily – ABC Joins NBC And CBS In Cutting Costs, October 25, 2008

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Movies, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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