Disney to cut 80 Makers Studios employees

It’s official: Disney is making some major cuts to Maker Studios, the MCN and digital media company it acquired in 2014. The media giant is laying off 80 Maker staffers as it restructures its publishing and digital media division, of which Maker is a part. (Disney hasn’t said just what percentage of Maker’s workforce those 80 cuts represent.) The new cuts come soon after Maker was shifted to Disney’s Consumer Products and Interactive Media (DCPI) group. One reason for the cuts: As some recent reports make clear, Disney plans to dramatically shrink the number of YouTube creators that Maker partners with. According to a source who spoke to Variety, Disney wants to drop the number of creators that Maker works with to less than 1,000. At one point, that number was as high as 60,000.

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