Paramount Global has laid off a number of employees at CMT, Nashville’s long-running cable channel, as part of a broader restructuring at Paramount Global ahead of it’s merger with media production and finance company Skydance Media in early 2025.
Back in August, Paramount Global announced plans to reduce their United States workforce by 15% or around 2,000 folks, and the company is not alone as many in the tech and entertainment industry have scaled back in 2024.
CMT employees that were impacted by the layoffs include vice president of production Quinn Brown, director of music and talent Stacey Cato, executive assistant Bryana Cielo, senior producer Jennifer DeVault, senior vice president of music and talent Leslie Fram, vice president of production management Heather Graffagnino, senior manager of music and talent Abbi Roth, senior director of production Ray Sells and senior manager of music and talent Jordan Walker.
Fran took to Instagram to post the following, in part: “Among my proudest achievements has been our decade+ support of women with CMT’s ‘Next Women of Country,’ a program that has helped promote and elevate over 100 female artists on all platforms, and our efforts to move the format forward in areas of inclusion and diversity… We soon founded an initiative called CMT ‘Equal Play’ – 50/50, male/female parity across all CMT video hours. With this momentum, we strongly encouraged the industry to play, sign and support more women and to make equally bold moves to help cement a format-wide commitment to women and equality.”
