Turner has laid off 60, but is still hiring

Turner Broadcasting System has laid off about 60 employees, a company spokeswoman said Monday.

The cuts were made sporadically over the past few months in various departments, including CNN, Cartoon Network, TNT, human resources, corporate communications, research, information technology and advertising sales, spokeswoman Shirley Powell said. They represent less than 1 percent of Turner’s 10,000-person work force.

However Turner, owned by Time Warner, is not in a hiring freeze and does have jobs posted on its Web site, Powell said.

In a March 2 memo to employees, Turner CEO Phil Kent acknowledged that the economic downturn is “impacting our worldwide revenues in ways that are immediate, significant and very difficult to predict.”

Kent said he asked division leaders to “cut costs and find operating efficiencies whenever possible” and said he was pleased that the company has not “had to resort to large-scale job elimination.”

But “some of our Turner colleagues have lost their jobs as a direct result of this recession and our cost-cutting initiatives,” Kent said in the memo.

Some of the jobs were eliminated to cut costs. Others were eliminated because the position was no longer necessary, Powell said.

Earlier this year, Time Warner said costs associated with Atlanta-based Turner’s long-term deal with the NBA and rapid international expansion of CNN curtailed operating income at the company’s networks in 2008.