Disney Interactive lays off 50

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DisneyIn a move blamed on a restructuring of its Disney Interactive division, The Walt Disney Co. has laid off about 50 employees. The unit, which employs 2,000, houses both the company’s online and video-game ops, but all of the pink slips were delivered Wednesday to the online side.


Disney Online includes Disney.com, DisneyFamily.com, BabyZone.com, Spoonful.com, the recently acquired Babble.com and other sites.

Disney Interactive experienced a similar reorganization 18 months ago, when 200 employees were laid off. The latest round of job cuts, which amounts to about 2.5 percent of the division, follows a fiscal quarter in which the unit was the only one of five throughout The Walt Disney Co. to post declining year-over-year revenue, according to the LA Business Journal.

Sales dropped to $196 million, a 22 percent decline over the same period the year before, and operating loss was reported at $42 million, although that marks a 51 percent improvement over the year-ago time frame.

No layoffs were made in the video-games group, which will release “Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two” on November 18.

See The LA Business Journal story here.