New York, November 4, 1996 --- Golden Books Family Entertainment, Inc. (Nasdaq: GBFE) announced that it has reorganized a number of divisions in its Publishing Group.
In a previously announced move, Golden Books has consolidated the editorial, creative, marketing and licensing functions of its Children's Publishing Group in its New York office. These functions had been split between New York and Racine, Wisconsin. Additionally, the company has taken some staff reductions in Human Resources, and in the Coin and Guide Book divisions. As a result of the reorganization, approximately 80 positions have been eliminated, 73 in Racine, 7 in New York. Nine Racine-based employees have received offers to relocate to New York.
In the first phase of the reorganization, Willa Perlman, who joined Golden Books in May as President and Publisher of the Children's Publishing Group, assembled a new team of senior managers and realigned the editorial and creative functions into four distinct publishing units focused on each of the company's key markets.
"We have moved quickly to create a powerful, integrated unit that will revitalize and build on our core children's publishing business," said Ms. Perlman. "This new streamlined organization will help us strengthen our editorial process, fully leverage our content resources, broaden distribution and, as a result, better serve our customers, licensors, and consumers."
Separately, the company also said it has reorganized Broadway Comics, which became part of Golden Books with its recent acquisition of the family entertainment library of Broadway Video Entertainment, L.P. Golden Books will now focus on leveraging existing characters in Golden Books' library, which includes the dormant properties of Gold Key Comics. Gold Key Comics, which had been among the world's leading comic book publishers, owns the copyrights for such characters as Turok, an action hero that will be featured in an upcoming Nintendo game. J. Winston Fowlkes and Jim Shooter, who managed Broadway Comics, will undertake this effort. Seven positions will be eliminated at the comic book unit.
Golden Books Family Entertainment, Inc. is the leading publisher of children's books in North America and owns one of the largest libraries of family entertainment copyrights. The company creates, publishes and markets entertainment products for children and families through all media.
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My opinion..................
Reading between the lines here, I draw the following conclusions.
1) Golden Books Family Entertainment, Inc., the large corporation, appears to believe that Broadway Comics can make money in the long term.
2) In the short term, it appears that 'downsizing' has occurred, and a new division, Golden Books Family Entertainment Inc., has been put in charge of comic books. Comics will now be treated as a 'book' commodity and the 'Golden Book' is clearly in charge. The company is trying to reduce its risk. If comics don't sell, people can work on other published material (e.g. Coin and Stamp guides, Golden Books). This is called staff consolidation and job enlargement. This is called downsizing and cost reduction.
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