Major networks enjoy fucking up Christmas for staffers

As if they all planned it together, the trend in this last leg of 2005 among major TV networks has been handing out pink slips. Forty staffers gone at WB Network, 100 pink-slipped at MTV Networks, 25 let go as Spelling Television lost its last vestiges of independence; layoffs come as a life-altering jolt to those who are cut, and a psychological blow to the co-workers and colleagues they leave behind. But the cuts at the 11-year-old WB Network went so high up the executive food chain -- claiming the network's longtime head of casting, head of scheduling and co-head of comedy development -- that it has led to a swirl of industry chatter about whether Time Warner, which has never been more bottom-line focused, has lost faith in the enterprise. -->R