The Walt Disney Company is reportedly preparing another major round of layoffs as its television business undergoes a significant restructuring, potentially adding hundreds more employees to the thousands who have already lost their jobs this year.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Disney is preparing to reorganize its television operations under Disney Entertainment Television Chairman Debra O’Connell. The restructuring could affect ABC Entertainment, 20th Television, Hulu Originals, Freeform, and other operations, with hundreds of additional layoffs expected. Further reductions could reportedly hit ABC News as well.
The report comes immediately after Disney eliminated more than 300 positions, primarily in human resources and technology.
Dana Walden Says Disney Must ‘Survive’
Disney President Dana Walden addressed the company’s continuing restructuring during an appearance at Bloomberg’s Screentime conference, describing the layoffs as “extremely painful.”
Walden explained that Disney’s various businesses and acquisitions had produced an organization containing numerous individual operations that increasingly needed to function as one centralized television business.
“So, we had to make decisions around centralizing and functioning more as a television business and not a group of silos,” Walden said, according to Yahoo.
But Walden made an even more striking observation about the technological upheaval facing traditional Hollywood.
“Technology set their sights on our business, and we must survive and thrive and grow,” Walden said, according to TheWrap. “That’s what we’re going to do.”
Dana Walden via Variety YouTube
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Disney has spent years attempting to adapt to that changing entertainment landscape. The company aggressively entered the streaming wars with Disney+, took complete control of Hulu, and has increasingly reorganized its entertainment operation around direct-to-consumer distribution.
The workforce required to operate that business, however, is becoming considerably smaller.
Thousands of Disney Jobs Cut in 2026
Disney eliminated approximately 1,000 positions in April across multiple divisions, including television, film, ESPN, marketing, technology, and corporate operations, according to Reuters.
Several hundred more positions were eliminated in July, affecting Pixar, National Geographic, ESPN, Disney Entertainment Television, and other operations. That was followed by the latest round of more than 300 cuts.
Josh D’Amaro by the Tree of Life – Disney
Taken together, Disney has eliminated well over 1,000 positions during 2026, with the total reaching into the thousands depending on the final tally from individual rounds. TheWrap reports that more than 10,000 Disney employees have been laid off since the company’s larger cost-cutting effort began in 2022.
And the restructuring apparently isn’t finished.
Disney Turns Toward AI and Automation
The continuing reductions are taking place as CEO Josh D’Amaro increasingly emphasizes technology and artificial intelligence as part of Disney’s future.
When Disney eliminated approximately 1,000 positions in April, D’Amaro told employees that the rapidly changing industry required the company to develop a more “agile and technologically-enabled workforce.”
D’Amaro has subsequently said AI can help Disney employees “work faster and smarter” and allow the company to operate “more cost-effectively.”
Josh D’Amaro in the welcome video for Disney Parks – YouTube, Wish Upon a Mouse
He has also insisted that AI “doesn’t replace” Disney’s storytellers.
However, automation has reportedly become a factor in Disney’s broader restructuring. The Wall Street Journal reports that Chief Legal and Global Affairs Officer Horacio Gutierrez told employees his roughly 1,000-person organization would become “a much smaller organization,” with automation among the reasons cited.
For Disney employees, Walden’s declaration that the company must “survive and thrive and grow” therefore comes with an increasingly significant caveat.
Disney may intend to grow in the new technological era. Its workforce increasingly appears unlikely to grow with it.
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