One day after announcing a record audience for the Super Bowl this weekend, Paramount Global chief executive officer Bob Bakish told employees the media network was laying off hundreds of people in an internal memo Tuesday (Feb. 13).
Paramount is reportedly laying off around 800 people, or about 3% of its workforce. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Quartz.
“These adjustments will help enable us to build on our momentum and execute our strategic vision for the year ahead — and I firmly believe we have much to be excited about,” Bakish wrote in the memo. Following the news, Paramount stocks sunk around 4% on Tuesday morning.
Impending employee cuts at Paramount this month were reported by Deadline in late January. Bakish pointed to a need for the company to “operate as a leaner company and spend less,” in a related memo. “Our priority is to drive earnings growth,” Bakish wrote. “And we’ll get there by growing our revenue while closely managing costs — a balance that will require every team, division and brand to be aligned.”
In November, Paramount announced a loss of $238 million in its streaming service in the third quarter.
On Monday, Paramount said this year’s Super Bowl 58, where the Kansas City Chiefs took home the championship against the San Francisco 49ers, was the most-streamed one in history, counting a record audience on the network. Paramount also said it had its best postseason viewership in more than a quarter-century, with audiences reaching their highest numbers since 1998.
CBS Sports reported the game had 123.4 million viewers — up 7% from last year’s Super Bowl, which held a previous record audience of about 115.1 million people. The price for a 30-second Super Bowl ad this year was roughly $7 million, according to researchers at Cornell. And a tied game pumped up the profits: CBS earned an additional $35 million in ad revenue when the game was extended into overtime, allotting space for an additional five ads to run, Adweek reported.