Turner completes reorganisation, eliminates jobs across the region

During this process, CNN Asia and Turner’s newly consolidated operations in Japan will remain unaffected. Markets in which Turner functions via joint-venturs will also not be involved. 

The redundancies will be achieved partly through natural attrition but mostly (about 60 per cent) through job reductions.

This decision, emphasised Marcopoto, was one that the company considered deeply before taking action. “Any job cuts we take seriously. There’s no performance-based criteria attached to it and we will support those affected in every way we can – either by reassigning them in Turner, either within the region or outside of it, or helping them to their next role,” he said in an exclusive interview with Campaign Asia-Pacific.

The decision to reduce Turner’s headcount was reached after a year-long process, explained Marcopoto. “A year ago, we took a hard and progressive look at an organisation that hasn’t changed in close to 20 years. We were the first business of our kind in Asia-Pacific and have grown incrementally over the decades as networks were acquired and markets opened up.”

Organic growth however left the corporation with inefficiencies. “Asia’s not one single market, and it’s about time for us to deploy accordingly so we restructured our resources and rebalanced them into three specific sub regions.”

As part of this process, the management of the company’s expansive portfolio of 24 networks, 29 websites and other businesses across 23 territories has now been fully rationalized into three operating regions.  As a result, reporting directly to Marcopoto will now be Siddharth Jain, MD South Asia, Yew Ming Lau, MD North Asia, Sunny Saha, MD Southeast Asia/Pacific, and Phil Nelson, VP business development.

After allowing the corporation to run in this new structure for a year, Turner Asia acknowledged that there were redundancies across the region, at all levels. “Essentially, this last stage addresses the balance of the organisation that was left after the reorganisation. The choice was between absorbing these costs, or to take that and redeploy it in ways that would improve economic results,” said Marcopoto.

He stressed that the redundancies were not spurred by poor financial performance, but rather by a drive to “align the company with future ambitions”. Turner Asia-Pacific has delivered a healthy year-on-year performance, he said, with sustainable growth rates despite being forced to shut down two channels that the network had acquired but were underperforming.

In April this year, Turner International India shut down Imagine TV, a Hindi channel it had acquired in 2010.

“The driving force is continuing to deliver outstanding performance for Turner Broadcasting which is the largest contributor of Time Warner’s total earnings globally,” said Marcopoto, declining to share figures as according to corporate policy, Turner does not disclose its financial performance.

“While it may feel counterintuitive that we are letting people go even though we’re doing well, markets evolve and we have to be proactive in working towards our next stage of growth,” he added.

Unfortunately, he continued, the planned expansion isn’t here at present, so cut backs are necessary.

Looking ahead, Turner Asia has ambitions to grow in the new media sphere and in developing markets such as Indonesia and China. “Essentially, we’re looking at expanding existing networks as well as developing our licensing and merchandising businesses.”

The broadcaster also plans to grow CNN in the region, and will be launching new shows in the coming week, generating up to six hours a day of original programming created by the Hong Kong broadcast centre.