☀️ JOBS MELT: Amazon’s AI-Fueled Layoffs; PAR Just Starting
HULU gets next Erin Foster show / PAR buys more UFC / APPLE dials in Sydney Sweeney, Lin pic
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LINKEDIN here if ya like or email me at seanmcnultynyc@gmail.com), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on Tuesday, October 28, 2025.
Where there’s nothing quite like staying up til 2:50 a.m. on a Monday night to watch 6 hours and 40 minutes of baseball. I’m told.
I was in bed shortly after MNF myself — but I’ll see all of you bleary eyed die-hards tonight for another baseball game tonight at 8 p.m.
Or at least the first 9 innings. My days of staying up watching any more than 11 innings of baseball ended in October 1986.
HMM: DISNEY is getting PIXAR in on the sports alt-cast fun — catch a Monsters Inc.-themed version of the Monday Night Football game in real time on DIS+ & ESPN+ (and ESPN2) on Nov. 4 . . . because nothing says “great for kids” like staying up late on a Monday school night to watch a football game.
DISNEY has previously done this in previous seasons with The Simpsons and Toy Story, where I probably made the same joke.
AND: It’s CNN All Access launch day! Suck it, CNN+. And gotta say — that streaming schedule for the main CNN feed there looks a lot like cable CNN to me. Enjoy your $7-a-month CNN, America!
WELL: PARAMOUNT folks — at least you won’t be alone this week in layoff news (more on the latest size and timing updates on that down below). The house that Jeff built so he could buy a newspaper is laying off 14k folks, according to Bloomberg. Or about 4% of its corporate workforce.
Reuters cited sources indicating the number for this tranche of layoffs could be up to 30k, or about a 10% corporate workforce reduction, when all is said and done.
Note that AMAZON’s last massive layoff of 27k folks came in 2 tranches in late 2022 / early 2023.
No word on any entertainment division cuts, but overall official details just starting to come out this morning.
A desire to pare down a Covid hiring boom was partially cited — but given the 27k layoff in 2022/23 . . . yeah, it’s the AI.
Andy Jassy also nodded to job cuts coming from AI use this summer, and in the end — you don’t spend billions on AI development and not take full advantage of the “cost-savings” elements . . . and this is the first step I’d think of many.
BUT: As for getting a job elsewhere — the WSJ had a good overview of the new kind of thinking beginning to permeate corporate leadership culture on hiring . . . likely with a significant and growing AI influence. This quote from INTUIT’s CFO says a lot:
“That typical behavior that settles in—and we’re all guilty of it—is, historically, if someone leaves, if Jane Doe leaves, I’ve got to backfill Jane.”
But now the corporate thinking is: “Is there an opportunity for us to rethink how we staff?” (i.e., the first thought when someone leaves, is fired, or laid off is now — do we even need to fill this role?)
ALTHOUGH: Hey, at least the commute for those still with jobs when the great “RTO 2026 🎉” effort begins will likely be worse.
THEN: Here are your Montclair Film Festival winners, including Sentimental Value and Come See Me In the Good Light taking the fiction and doc feature audience awards.
ALSO: John Dickerson is the first big name to depart CBS NEWS in the Bari era, again signaling changes are afoot for the CBS Evening News, which Dickerson co-anchors (he’s leaving at the end of the year).
SO: In case you’re wondering where your kids’ college tuition is going — colleges are now collectively paying $169M to football coaches they fired for being bad at their jobs this season alone. A season that still has 2 more months left.
OH: Let SPOTIFY’s new U.K. and Switzerland #pricehikes portend a U.S. one in 2026 as ya like.
AH: OPENAI is coming for music too (or at least anyone making a living in the stock music business), as it’s developing a tool to generate music using text and audio prompts.
It’s even enlisting Juilliard students to put themselves out of a job before they’re even in the market, by helping OPENAI annotate music scores in the process.
HEY: MSG books up fast, so . . . sure, put May 13 down for your WBD Upfront day.
PLUS: Mark Nov. 15 as the day you’ll still be calling it MSNBC — but the network will be calling itself MS NOW. Which is happening on the highly rated day of the week of . . . Saturday. 🤔 I guess it’s always good to allow 2 buffer days to make sure the folks in graphics didn’t F anything up.
FINALLY: While I’m sure you’re all up to speed on the Taylor Sheridan move — there are a couple of unique aspects of this decision around the streaming exposure that Sheridan is trading with this deal that are important to look at, and not really being discussed at the moment.
Plus a few things to keep in mind about the state of PEACOCK and why NBCU is paying the reported potential pricetag that it is (should Taylor deliver fully on the kinda bonkers TV volume that’s also said to be a part of the deal).
📺 THE TV SET
