Disney announces another round of layoffs affecting Pixar, ESPN and National Geographic

The Walt Disney Co. is reducing its workforce by several hundred positions across multiple divisions, continuing a restructuring effort that began earlier this year. Corporate functions, ESPN, Disney Entertainment Television and the company’s film studios are slated for cuts, with Pixar identified as the studio facing the largest reductions and National Geographic the most affected unit within Disney Entertainment Television.

Pixar, which released the original film Hoppers and Toy Story 5 this year, will see staff reductions, while ESPN’s on-air talent roster also shrank. Longtime SportsCenter anchor and Baseball Tonight host Karl Ravech, who joined the network in 1993, and former NFL player-turned-analyst Ryan Clark were among those let go. Most ESPN layoffs involve behind-the-scenes personnel linked to the network’s recent acquisition of the NFL Network.

"Over the past several months, we’ve made significant progress integrating the NFL assets that we acquired into ESPN. Throughout this process, we have taken the time to carefully evaluate our collective teams, resources and organizational structure to best position us for the future. As a result, we had to make some difficult decisions about job impacts that we will be communicating today," ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro wrote in a memo to staff on Tuesday.

The layoffs were communicated to affected employees on Tuesday morning. This is the third wave of reductions this year, following a January consolidation of marketing departments under Asad Ayaz and an April restructuring that impacted roughly 1,000 workers. The latest cuts are smaller in scale but reflect Disney’s ongoing effort to align its operations with the “One Disney” model and to adapt to rapid technological changes in the media industry.