NBCUniversal will lay off more than three dozen staffers who worked on E!’s entertainment shows “Daily Pop” and “Nightly Pop,” which were canceled last month. The move is due to a larger restructuring effort of the cable channel to create a centralized Terrace Studios that will share production efforts across E! News brands and NBCU’s syndicated “Access” programs.
“Daily Pop” will end its five-year run mid-September, while “Nightly Pop” will end its four-year run in early October. Starting in late October, a new show will debut on E! and involve the hiring of new staffers, though only a portion of the number being let go, according to Business Insider, which first reported the news of the layoffs.
“One of our top priorities is to solidify E!’s role in entertainment news well into the future, and on that note, we are restructuring the leadership team to better help us achieve that goal,” wrote Tracie Wilson, NBCU’s executive vice president of syndication studios and E! News, in a memo to staffers at the time.
She continued, “We will be announcing more details in the coming weeks, but our vision for the linear show is to return to the roots of the E! News brand as the gold standard of entertainment news coverage … I want to say a huge thank you to the Daily Pop and Nightly Pop teams for their creativity and commitment, including working countless hours to keep these shows up and running through the pandemic.”
The restructuring also included the shuffling of executive staff for the extension of NBCU’s “Center of Excellence” development program to the production department. E! veteran Ed Zarcoff was tapped as senior vice president news operations and is leading the production side of the news unit, under Wilson. Tammy Filler remained as EVP and editor-in-chief of the digital team, where she is leading direct reports Jen Lavin (who oversees creative) and Jamie Blynn (who oversees E! online editorial). The team is still searching for a digital strategy exec.
Reps for NBCU had no further comment.