The big shake-up of America Online's reorganization may have passed - the company announced realignments in its content and interactive services divisions on Monday and laid off 500 CompuServe employees - but aftershocks continue.
In what some insiders say is the culmination of creative differences between Web creators and the company's focus on its proprietary online service, AOL has laid off 40 of 80 staffers at its showcase Entertainment Asylum programming network. Another 65 have been laid off from AOL gaming efforts.
The move appears to mark an about-face in the company's thinking about creating new programming that can straddle both its own service and appeal to Web users as well.
Just a year ago, America Online bought Lightspeed Media, the company behind the soapy Web hits "The Spot" and "Grape Jam." Lightspeed was folded into AOL Studio's Greenhouse Network in hopes of building cross-media entertainment programming. Three months ago Greenhouse Network launched its first site on the Web: Entertainment Asylum.
But on Tuesday, nearly the entire former Lightspeed staff - half of Entertainment Asylum's workforce - was let go.
"Monday's announcements showed a commitment of AOL to Studios, so it's nice for us. ... But at the same time, we've had to reorganize some staff," says Anne Bentley, a Greenhouse Network spokeswoman. "Lightspeed's experience was in creating and building companies. ... It's almost like a handoff; you need resources to build, produce and launch, but now Entertainment Asylum will be more streamlined to fit in AOL."
But with 40 staff members let go from a staff of fewer than 100, some are grumbling that the layoffs were a strategic removal of Lightspeed's creative team. Included in the layoffs were Lightspeed founders and executives Scott Zakarin, Troy Bolotnick, Rich Tackenberg, and Laurie Plaksin, as well as key longtime Lightspeed team members Charlie Flint, Patrick Nelson, and Meg Hubbard. Zakarin was president of programming, and Plaksin was a prominent personality on the site's featured "Screen Team."
Those affected by the layoffs were unavailable for comment, but one staff member voiced the opinion that the "downsizing" was a result of creative differences. Lightspeed had been a Web company, a builder of personality-based Web sites with devoted fans, while AOL's main focus has traditionally been its proprietary network.
"We've always butted heads with AOL people - they've had a different vision than we have of how things should be.... It's too bad, and I have a feeling [Entertainment Asylum] is going to go back to an AOL-based thing, instead of the Web," said an employee who asked to remain anonymous. "AOL has never been very into the Web; they didn't understand it."
Bentley contends, however, that AOL Studios is forging ahead with its Web properties and that Entertainment Asylum on the Web is growing according to plan. It recently reached its first day of one million page views.
Bentley confirmed that layoffs also swept through AOL's WorldPlay, the pay-per-play gaming area launched last summer. Work on CyberPark, a 3-D game in development, was canceled, with 40 people laid off, while another 25 WorldPlay staffers were given pink slips as part of AOL's decision to integrate WorldPlay with the AOL Games Channel.
