Major Cuts at CBS O&O's

This may not affect any of us, but it shows what could happen on any given day. This is from "Shoptalk" at TVSpy.com



The house cleaning and budget cuts continue at more of the CBS O&O's.

Yesterday, WCBS in New York, WBBM in Chicago, KPIX in San Francisco and WBZ in Boston were all hit with cuts. I should add a important 'by the way' here...some keep calling these "layoffs," but as one manager told me "layoffs imply these employees might be called back...no, these are cuts."

Of course, these latest cuts are in addition to the ones already announced in Sacramento, Miami, Denver, Dallas, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis. Rob Owen at the Post-Gazette has a blurb about the Pittsburgh KDKA cuts in this morning's edition.

But one of biggest CBS stations hit is in Boston.

WBZ in Boston whacked 30 jobs yesterday. The headline for Jessica Heslam's story calls it "Black Monday"

Last night, I read about the Kirtzman and Weinberger cuts on the blog NewsByte2 where it was pointed out that WCBS wasted no time in pulling the Kirtzman and Weinberger bios and photos from the WCBS.com website


I'll have more on the WCBS cuts in a piece this morning from Richard Huff at the New York Daily News and stories on the cuts from Chicago and Dallas. ShopTalk also hears that KCBS in Los Angeles made cuts...more on that in tomorrow's edition of ShopTalk.

One additional note on the CBS cuts. A week or so ago, one CBS O&O manager shared with me his upset over postings at the TVSPY.com Watercooler and how posters had characterized his station's cuts as a "blood bath." Maybe that's not a fair assessment for his station, but I think it's fair to label it a "blood bath" across the CBS group.