According to MTV, the preliminary estimate of the need to reduce personnel is 45 people, but the number may increase if the planned new tasks are not accepted.
Media company MTV says that it will start change negotiations, which will concern all of MTV’s personnel, i.e. around 430 people. MTV is owned by the Swedish telecom operator Telia.
According to MTV, the change negotiations are being held for financial, production and the need to reorganize operations. The company says in its press release that in recent years its finances have been weighed down by the corona pandemic, Russia’s war of aggression, accelerated inflation and expensive sports rights.
“At the moment, a loss-making business must be turned into a profitable one. The goal is to make MTV a long-term sustainable and profitable media company.”
MTV says that it is planning structural and functional changes, which may cause job tasks to change, merge, cease, outsource, substantially change the terms of the employment relationship, part-time jobs and layoffs.
The company also says it is renewing its strategy. According to the company, in addition to improving cost efficiency, it includes, among other things, the development of a strong streaming service and improving the targeting of advertisements in both streaming and linear viewing.
According to MTV, the preliminary estimate of the need to reduce personnel is 45 people, but it may increase if the planned new tasks are not accepted.
“Even though the viewing and consumption of our content is at a great level, MTV’s cost efficiency needs to be improved. The changes require us to have new skills, new job descriptions and cost cutting, which is why change negotiations are now necessary,” says MTV’s CEO Johannes Leppänen in the bulletin.
MTV: no trustee of journalists Petteri Savolainen tells HS that the change negotiations did not come as a surprise to the staff.
“These always come as a shock, but people knew how to smell the signs that at least something was going to happen. How long does a listed company think about a part of it that generates a loss all the time?”
According to Savolainen, it is not yet known what the change negotiations will concretely focus on. He says that in addition to the reduction of 45 people announced by the company, there will be people whose job description or the content of the employment contract will change.
“Yes, we’ll be hanging on a loose log here for six weeks. But let’s work and see what the end result is.”
Savolainen cannot yet assess how the expected staff reductions will be reflected in the company’s operations or products. According to him, there hasn’t been a so-called laxity in the company’s operations in ages.
“Yes, we have all our resources harnessed for use. With Maikkar, a lot of programs are made with very few people. I hope at least it doesn’t happen that we try to do everything and maybe even more, but with even fewer people. I hope nothing like that is planned,” says Savolainen.
MTV: no the parent company Telia is basically a telecom operator, but the company also owns MTV, the Swedish television channel TV4 and the streaming service C More.
It was the TV and media business that weighed on Telia’s results in the second quarter of the year. The adjusted operating result of Telia’s TV and media business in the first half of the year was 784 million kroner, or about 66 million euros in loss.
According to Suomen Asiakastieto, MTV oy itself made losses of 19.6 million euros in 2022. The adjusted operating loss of Telia’s TV and media business last year was 507 million kroner, or just under 43 million euros.
Telia the problem of the media business has been, among other things, the weakening of the advertising market and the more expensive sports rights.
At the latest at the end of next January left by the company managing director Allison Kirkby stated in connection with the interim report in July that in the future the company will only seek rights that support the company’s TV channels, i.e. Swedish TV4 and Finnish MTV in their home markets, and for which the price-to-income ratio is significantly better than at present.
Inderes analyst Joni Grönqvist evaluate at the end of July for HSthat Telia might be putting its media business in sales condition.
“When the company says that [medialiiketoiminta] is non-strategic, then it can be detached and thought about. According to my own assessment, the company wants to get the business into a better profit condition first, in order to get a better price for it,” Grönqvist said in July.
Correction on August 15, 2023 at 2:00 p.m.: Allison Kirkby has not yet left Telia, but she will retire as CEO at the end of January 2024 at the latest.
Correction August 15, 2023 at 3:12 p.m.: Petteri Savolainen is a trustee of MTV’s journalists, not a trustee of MTV as a whole, as was said earlier in the story.