Originally posted Friday, March 15, 2019 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
HBO will shut down a broadcast operations facility on Long Island, N.Y. with some jobs coming to Atlanta.
The network said of the 200 current jobs, 75 will be eliminated. Some of the remaining 125 positions will move to HBO’s new offices at Manhattan’s new Hudson Yards while others will move to Atlanta, where Turner broadcast operations are based.
"With two new state-of-the-art facilities now existing in Hudson Yards and Atlanta, the services out of the Hauppauge Communications Center will become redundant so the plan is to close the center by year's end," HBO said Wednesday in a statement.
Post-production work will be done more in New York while broadcast operations go to Atlanta.
With Turner networks TNT, TBS and truTV merging with HBO, this is the first step in back-office consolidation.
Broadcast operations includes tracking satellite operations so cable and satellite networks receive its signals cleanly. It also ensures that ads are properly slotted for ad-supported networks.
Under new AT&T ownership, Turner itself will soon disappear as name within the organization chart. Atlanta has Turner network marketing, affiliate relations and operations based at the Techwood campus, along with some programming operations for Cartoon Network and TCM, which will be under Warner Bros. Turner Sports is also based in Atlanta and will soon be placed in a division with CNN and HLN.
It’s still unclear whether there will be a net loss of jobs in Atlanta but this first maneuver does give the city more positions.
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