TV18 Broadcast Limited, the broadcasting subsidiary of Network18, has laid off around 300 - 400 people as part of its restructuring exercise last week, reports Livemint, citing three sources familiar with the development. It notes that Network18 MD Raghav Behl has not responded to their queries yet and did not respond to their phone calls. On being contacted by MediaNama regarding any layoffs in Web18, the divisions CEO Lakshmi Narasimhan declined to comment and pointed us towards Saket Saurabh, GM - Corporate Development. IBNLive CEO Rajan Srinivas did the same. Saurabh did not respond to our calls, and Shampa Kochhar, Group Head of HR for Network18 was not reachable at the time of writing this article. The Mint report says that the TV18 layoffs were across various departments including editorial, sales, technical and marketing departments and accounted for 30% of TV18's estimated workforce of 1,300 employees. The worst affected were production teams which include camera men and editors, feature programming teams and entertainment programming teams. Citing an unnamed TV18 employee, it also mentioned that the company has merged the operational teams of CNN IBN and IBN7 while a significant number of employees at CNBC Awaaz’s Delhi operations were laid off. Several feature shows like 'Living It Up' have been reportedly discontinued while teams for other shows have been reduced significantly. This development follows several media reports from last week which had indicated that TV18 was looking to restructure its operations and reduce its workforce significantly, as part of a cost cutting exercise due to the lackluster advertising environment and government regulations like…
