Australia – Pedestrian Group, the media company owned by Nine Entertainment, has announced that it will cease licensing several overseas titles amidst a wave of job cuts and a greater focus on its own wholly-owned brands. The titles that will be affected include Vice, Gizmodo, Refinery29, Kotaku and Lifehacker.
“We’ve made the tough decision to focus on our wholly owned Pedestrian brands where we control the strategy, the content, the product, the sales and the outcome – the entire business. This will have an impact on roles within the group and I appreciate the uncertainty this change creates, so we will be in contact immediately with those people,” according to an email from Matt Rowley, CEO of Pedestrian Group, towards its staff
Rowley also blamed the licence partners facing financial headwinds and instability in the corporate world, as well as the overall decline of the advertising market and the rise of social media platforms for news.
Moreover, he also said that he would also exit Nine as a result of the changes after the transition period, with a new CEO to be appointed.
The shutdown of these publication titles in Australia follows news of 40 out of 95 jobs being cut off from Pedestrian Group, as well as 90 jobs that were let go from Nine’s publishing division announced last month.
Mike Sneesby, CEO of Nine Entertainment, told staff recently that the decision had been made due to the “economic headwinds” facing the media industry and “tough decisions” would be made by mid-July to save the company US$30m.
This news also comes following a wave of media-related layoffs and shutdowns, including of VICE Media, Time, Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Forbes, and Business Insider. In APAC, CNN Philippines recently shut down due to financial losses, effectively laying off its entire workforce.
