NBC cuts variety verticals, lays off 150 staffers

NBC News is moving away from diversity initiatives in broadcasting and has “eliminated its teams dedicated to covering issues affecting Black, Asian American, Latino and LGBTQ+ groups,” The Wrap reports. This is part of a sweeping layout plan that saw 150 staffers lose their jobs.

It was in 2020 that NBCU chief Cesar Conde launched the diversity plans. “The demographics of America have been changing for decades… and that change is accelerating,” he said at the time.

“Women today make up nearly half of the American work force and already earn well over half of all bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees,” Conde said. “This year, for the first time, a majority of Americans aged 18 or younger, will be people of color. In twenty years, more than half of all Americans, will be people of color.”

“The NBCUniversal News Group is not going to wait for change to happen and just react to it. We’re going to lead,” said Conde in 2020. Now, the news brand is trying to catch up.

Mainstream news has been slowly but steadily moving away from woke diversity initiatives as viewers have expressed distrust in media and the White House has issued executive orders to end practices that focus on identity over meritocracy. The NBC cuts were announced on Wednesday at a staff meeting by executive vide president of editorial Catherine Kim.

NBC’s 2009 “diversity reel” in which NBC staffers spoke about how important the initiatives were so that they could “cater to everyone.” An announcer on that reel stated that “NBC Universal has always believed that a diverse company is a successful company” and touted their segregated “affinity” programs where workers can divide themselves based on identity classifications.

The terminations are in line with a separation of Peacock from the far left MSNBC network. NBC’s diversity focused verticals, NBC BLK, NBC Asian America, NBC Latino, and NBC OUT will still continue publishing articles that focus on those topics but will do so with far less staff. A source told The Wrap that “NBC News may ultimately retain up to five staffers who will contribute coverage on the verticals to the newsroom.”

GLAAD issued a statement to Advocate, an LGBTQ+ outlet, saying that the change is “part of a dangerous pattern of mainstream media outlets choosing to lose trusted and talented journalists who focus on important LGBTQ news that otherwise is under-reported or not reported at all.” 

The layoffs target about 7% of the total newsroom of 2,000 workers and 2% of the NBCU News Group at large. MSNBC and NBC News had been running separate news operations but now that MSNBC has been jettisoned, spun-off into a different company, NBC News was free to reduce their total staff. MSNBC is planning a relaunch as MS NOW and has been hiring staff for that effort. 

Competitor CBS News recently made the bold move of hiring Bari Weiss to be editor-in-chief of the news brands. As founder of The Free Press, the former New York Times editor appears to have an outsider’s perspective on television news. Bringing her in is intended to bring trust back to news media as well as more balance to what has been—for years—primarily Democrat biased coverage on major news networks.