The music and media industries are accustomed to layoffs. Each has endured the challenges associated with digital media for decades now, as well as the seemingly endless rounds of restructuring and layoffs that accompany them. Paramount Global — the parent company of streaming service Paramount+ and numerous other brands, including Nashville’s long-running cable channel Country Music Television — is one of the latest to enact such changes.
Late last month, Paramount Global laid off numerous employees at CMT. The layoffs are part of a broader restructuring at Paramount Global, which is slated to merge with media production and finance company Skydance Media in a multibillion-dollar transaction during the first half of 2025. Paramount Global also owns the cable networks VH1, BET, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and Showtime, among others.
The layoffs at CMT come on the heels of an August announcement from Paramount Global of plans to reduce its U.S. workforce by 15 percent, or roughly 2,000 employees. Paramount is just one of many large corporations having to scale back, with major 2024 layoffs including significant cuts at Warner Bros. Discovery in July; Electronic Arts (EA) and Vice Media Group in February; and Sports Illustrated, Pitchfork and Universal Music Group in January, to name a few.
Laid-off CMT employees 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.
In an Instagram post, Fram reflected on her 13-year tenure at CMT, during which she became a local face of the network and an institution in herself within Nashville’s country music industry. Fram played a key role in much of the network’s more popular programming, including the fan-favorite CMT Crossroads and a “resurrected” version of CMT Storytellers. She also helped found and champion some of CMT’s recent diversity efforts, including the especially popular Next Women of Country program and the newly beloved Equal Access program.
In addition to thanking former colleagues and reflecting on her broader tenure at the network, Fram writes, 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.”
The comments beneath Fram’s post reflect the breadth and depth of the artistic community she served, with messages of gratitude and support from genre veterans like Martina McBride, contemporary stars including Carly Pearce and no shortage of up-and-comers like Madeline Edwards, herself a 2022 Next Women of Country honoree.
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In an email conversation with the Scene, Fram shares that she plans to stay involved with Equal Access, though she says she’s not able to share how or in what capacity. She says her current focus is “helping those on [her] team that were affected [by the layoffs] and helping them with their job searches.”
This recent round of layoffs isn’t CMT’s first dust-up with Paramount in 2024. In June, Paramount deleted all of CMT’s online news content as part of a broader purge that included the entire MTV News web archive, which dated back to 1996. Comedy Central’s web archive was also wiped out, with losses including entire seasons of series like The Daily Show and bonus video content for shows like South Park. Some of this deleted material is still available on YouTube or other streaming services, but much seems lost for good.
What will become of CMT’s programming is currently unclear, as these layoffs left the network with a skeleton crew of staffers, some of whom will work only through the end of this year. What is clear, though, is that it’s a painful loss for both Nashville and the country music industry, and a grim reminder of the industry’s precarity.
The Scene contacted Paramount Global last week to request comment on plans for CMT but did not receive a response in time for publication. The Scene also contacted several laid-off CMT staffers for comment; all but Fram declined to participate.
