iWorld
ZEE5 unwraps the gift of joy with ‘ZEE5 Kids Festival’ this holiday season
Mumbai: The ZEE5 video streaming platform, and the OTT arm of ZEEL, are spreading cheer during the much-awaited Christmas to New Year break with the ‘ZEE5 Kids Festival’. From 20 December 2023 to 1 January 2024, young viewers can dive into a world of delightful entertainment on ZEE5, spanning multiple blockbuster English theatricals, select movies and TV shows in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, and Bangla. Apart from an expansive AVOD roster, the festival is also offering a plethora of SVOD titles for free. Family entertainers featuring popular international blockbusters are available on TVOD.
ZEE5 head – AVOD marketing Abhirup Datta said, “With ZEE5 Kids Festival, we are introducing a new property for our youngest audience group. This is the time when everyone wants to spend quality time with family and friends and binge on some good content which is suitable for all age groups. The list of titles for this festival is specifically curated to provide a wide spectrum of choices across languages and genres in line with our commitment to increase access to premium content. I hope it makes the year-end eve a memorable and delightful experience for our ZEE5 viewers.”
ZEE5 will host titles like ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’, ‘Dolittle’ in English, ‘Atkan Chatkan’, ‘Gadget Guru Ganesha’ in Hindi and ‘My Dear Bootham’ in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada amongst others during the 12-day festival.
iWorld
Snapchat parent Snap cuts 16 per cent of workforce in AI-driven restructuring
The Snapchat parent is axing around 1,000 jobs and closing 300 open roles to save $500m, as artificial intelligence makes smaller teams the new normal
CALIFORNIA: Snap is snapping. The Snapchat parent has confirmed plans to cut around 1,000 employees, roughly 16 per cent of its full-time workforce, as it bets that artificial intelligence can do what headcount once required. Shares jumped more than 10 per cent in premarket trading on the news, a brisk vote of confidence from a market that has watched the stock shed about 31 per cent this year.
The restructuring, which also closes more than 300 open roles, follows pressure from activist investor Irenic Capital Management, which holds an economic interest of about 2.5 per cent in the company and has been loudly pushing Snap to tighten its portfolio and lift performance. The firm got what it asked for, and then some.
Chief executive Evan Spiegel told employees the cuts would reduce annualised expenses by more than $500m by the second half of the year. The company expects to incur charges of between $95m and $130m related to the layoffs, mostly severance, with the bulk landing in the second quarter. Staff in Snap’s North America team were asked to work from home on the day of the announcement.
The financial backdrop is not without bright spots. Snap expects first-quarter revenue to rise around 12 per cent to approximately $1.53 billion, broadly in line with analyst estimates. Adjusted core profit for the January to March quarter is forecast at about $233m, comfortably ahead of Wall Street’s expectation of $186.8m.
The harder question surrounds Specs, Snap’s augmented reality smart glasses subsidiary, which Irenic has urged the company to spin off or shut down entirely. The unit has absorbed more than $3.5 billion in investment and burns through approximately $500m in cash annually. Snap is pressing ahead regardless, with a consumer product expected later this year, even as Meta leads the market in the segment.
Spiegel is betting that leaner teams, smarter machines and a consumer AR play can restore Snap’s credibility with investors who have run out of patience. The redundancy notices have gone out. The harder restructuring, the one that requires a hit product rather than a headcount reduction, is still very much pending.
