This article was originally published by The Ankler on December 26, 2024 and authored by Elaine Low who covers the entertainment industry.
What Disney and WBD are hiring for, and the ‘new breed of media professional: hybrid talents who can blend technological sophistication with creative vision’
In April of this year, I wrote about the state of the jobs one year after the writers strike began.
Jobs One Year After the Bloodbath: Hope & Pain
At the same time, I also extensively reported this past year on where the jobs are — we know where they aren’t — always trying to find the opportunity for those you working in an industry that can frustratingly feel like it doesn’t have enough of it:
Where The TV Jobs Are Now (And Not)
Where the Jobs Are (and Aren’t), Part II
The Job Files: Netflix and NBCU
Now we’re in the last gasp of 2024, and in some ways, this year wasn’t as dreary many feared it would be — shows are being sold and made again, though not in great a volume as hoped — but it’s important to remember that for those who haven’t been able to find much work, the ground remains unsteady. “I can count on one hand the number of people I know [who] are gainfully employed, so I will say it’s pretty bleak,” says one 35-year-old producer who wrote into my Salary Confessions series. “I have been generally financially independent since I graduated college (until now), and I’ve never experienced a low this low. I feel like an absolute failure. I can’t even get interviews for jobs I am uniquely qualified for,” this person wrote, “Because there is so little work, it’s hard to be satisfied. I’m embarrassed and ashamed that I can’t pay my own way anymore. Because producing doesn’t pay until something gets made, it’s hard to find the passion for my projects that I on had. It all feels pointless and hopeless.”
Few companies were in expansion mode this year. Paramount Global, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery each engaged in significant layoffs. Most agents were j trying to find work for their existing roster of talent instead of seeking out fresh blood. “I think everyone can agree 2024 was just not a great year for hiring,” says JLS Media’s Joanna Sucherman, an executive recruiter whose clients have included NBC, Fox, Disney and other entertainment companies. “It was a year of consolidation, which meant less opportunities for people, which is unfortunate. So with the new year and people taking stock, I want to do two things today. First, take another look at the job listings around town, and two, let you hear for more entertainment industry professionals who confided in Salary Confessions Together, they offer a window into the realities of what all the contraction and salivating over SpinCos look like outside the executive suite, where opportunities lie — and what they mean for the future (yours in particular). In this Series Business, you’ll learn:
- The exact number of available jobs — and what they are — in the Los Angeles area at Disney and Warner Bros.
- Which divisions are hiring
- The AI-related openings at the studios
- The best thing you can do to stand out as a job seeker according to Sucherman
- The one trait she says is more important than any other to keep your job
- Her expert outlook for the 2025 jobs market
- Why another executive recruiter believes we’re seeing “the emergence of a new breed of media professional”
- The skills that person will have to compete
Disney: An Eye on AI (But Not Only AI!)
The comedown from Peak TV has been tough to digest. Hulu and ABC, for example, combined their scripted comedy and drama teams while ABC Signature was absorbed into 20th Television, resulting in the cuts of dozens of Disney staffers. In looking at the job listings across Disney’s Los Angeles bureaus — Glendale, Burbank, L.A. and Santa Monica — there are currently 259 openings available. (Some of those listings are listed across multiple U.S. cities or offer a remote option.) What are they? Unsurprisingly, nearly half of those (124 jobs) were in the tech division: Software engineers, data engineers, content distribution engineers, product designers. The next most in-demand segment was the corporate division (27 jobs) — auditors, project managers — followed by the direct-to-consumer division (24), which included a mix of listings for data analysts and content planning manage A cluster of AI-related listings were posted in late November and early December including a generative AI solutions architect who can “develop innovative, robust and scalable Gen AI applications and solutions” across the company’s business and a senior product manager who can shepherd its AI virtual assistants (read: improve customer service bots). The Gen AI position pays $149,240 to $200,200 a year, while the product manager gig pays $145,400 to $195,000 in California.
WBD: Tech International
Warner Bros. Discovery this year slashed away at its business affairs, production and finance divisions as part of a meaningful layoff, and it capped 2024 with a corporate restructuring that, as my colleague Sean McNulty noted, will likely result in another reduction in headcount sometime next year. So yes, WBD lists only 50 open roles in the entire state of California right now, with eight in studio operations, ranging from overnight custodian to VP of global content management. Next up are its consumer products (six) and technology divisions (five). Remove the geographical parameters, though, and WBD, like Disney, is largely focused on beefing up its tech departments. Out of WBD’s 526 available jobs, 15 are technology positions. In a globalized industry, those tech roles are flung far across the world: 52 of those 150 tech jobs at WBD are in the U.S. — again, with just five of those based in California. Forty-five of them are located in India, and the rest are scattered across Canada, the U.K., Mexico and Europe. “The only area I did see with some growth, or at least holding steady and not cutting, tended to be technology,” says Sucherman, speaking to the overall market. She pinpoints analytics in particular as the tech position most in demand. “That was the one where people don’t want to make that team too short.”
A Jobs ‘Inflection Point’ and How to Keep Yours
This year “there were just less shows being ordered, which meant less creativity, just not a need for a huge development team,” says Sucherman. “Development teams were cut. Marketing got hit.” Sucherman isn’t expecting a huge influx of jobs at the start of 2025. But she does see the green shoots of an improved Hollywood economy. “I think that we’re coming up on another inflection point, if we’re not already there,” says Sucherman. “And the good thing about disruption is that it means there are mo jobs coming. Streaming has already disrupted the marketplace, and as we start redefine what everything is going to look like, how things are done in the next o to two years will be setting the table because there will be more disruptors and those disruptors provide more jobs.” While the major studios have shed execs left and right, some of those power players have formed new production companies and firms that, in success, will expand with new hires. Others have forged paths as independent consultants, or have taken their skill sets to different industries.
“We’re witnessing the emergence of a new breed of media professional: hybrid talents who can blend technological sophistication with creative vision, transforming how we conceive, produce, and distribute content across a rapidly evolving digital landscape,” says Mike Doonan, managing partner at executive search firm SPMB.
If you’ve been forced to leave the entertainment world in recent years and fled to Wall Street or Silicon Valley, some of the new skills and training you’ve acquired may have made you even more valuable as you look for a re-entry point. Amid layoffs in the tech industry,
“Many of these professionals are now returning to the familiarity of their former industries, and traditional enterprises now have access to top-tier tech talent that was previously unattainable,” Doonan recently wrote.
“It’s almost as if these non-tech enterprises lent their people to Big Tech for free training, and now they can rehire them at lower costs. At the same time many of these employees return humbled and excited to bring this new knowledge back to more traditional industries, allowing them to focus on deep transformation and unlocking value previously hidden.”
If you never left the entertainment industry, that might make a person nervous, the idea of more incoming competition — particularly as employers expect their remaining (and any incoming) employees to do the proverbial more with less. But rolling with the punches is a skill in and of itself. “The main thing that’s in demand is versatility,” says Sucherman. “[Companies] don’t want to pigeonhole somebody as much as they used to, where you just do one job and that’s all you do. You’ve got to be able to wear several hats. That’s v important because you just don’t know what you might be working on from day day, so you’ve got to be flexible and you’ve got to be versatile. There’s so much change that you’ve got to be able to go with it.”
As for what job seekers can do to break through the noise, she has one piece of advice that might sound trite, but she says applies to even the most senior-level executive applicants. “The one thing I always tell everybody that helps you stand out, no matter who you are, where you are, is your enthusiasm for the job — just being excited about the company, the opportunity,” she adds. “Even if you have tons and tons of years of experience, if you don’t care about the job and you’re not enthusiastic about it, you’re not gonna get it.” But first, I know, that requires a job opening, an interview and all sorts of things that feel out of reach for so many right now. Hang in there, and I hope to keep providing you more insights into the job market in the coming year.
