Indianapolis – Emmis Communications Corporation (Nasdaq: EMMS) today announced that it will eliminate 120 positions in its 15-station Television Division.
Many of the positions impacted are at television properties EMMIS purchased in October 2000 from Lee Enterprises, and involve the natural integration and the strategic reallocation of resources from Lee management to EMMIS management.
“The moves today come after much deliberation, and while personally painful for all of us, are necessary for EMMIS to be ready for a dynamic marketplace,” EMMIS Television President Randy Bongarten said. “The company is offering comprehensive severance packages and is taking other steps to ease this transition for the affected workers. Facing an uncertain economy, we will focus our resources in sales and marketing, while stressing maximum productivity in all areas of our operations.”
In another step to improve productivity, EMMIS announced that it has begun to integrate its Television Division with Centralcasting, which will consolidate the stations’ technical operations into regional locations. This move, which will be rolled out to the EMMIS Television stations in the next few months, will decrease operating and capital costs while improving the quality of the on-air product.
“This move to the latest technology clearly demonstrates our full commitment to operating all areas of our business as efficiently as possible while continuing to deliver quality programming in our markets,” Bongarten said.