MTV Networks North is restructuring its organisation, leading to job losses in its Belgian and Amsterdam offices.
Following an international re-alignment, the name MTV Networks North will also change into Viacom International Media Networks North to better reflect the portfolio of channels. There will be three different content divisions, Kids & Family, Youth & Music and Comedy with centralised programming control.
Kids & Family will be based in Berlin and will take care of the programming on Nickelodeon and Nick Jr as well as the Dutch young kids channel Kindernet. Youth & Music will be based in Stockholm and comprise the MTV, TMF and VH1 channels. The Comedy division (Comedy Central) and the Dutch Comedy Central Family) will be based in Amsterdam.
The countries affected are The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Although programming will from now on be centralised, all sales activities will continue to be based in each of the countries.
Jobs will go in Belgium and probably The Netherlands. In Belgium, just 12 jobs out of 35 will remain in the offices in Lint. All sales activities for the channels will be handled by SBS Belgium, which will take care of all ads sales from January 1, 2012. Until now, sales house RMB handled the sales for the MTV channels in the country. SBS will also sell the portfolio of Discovery channels.
In Amsterdam, a number of programming jobs for the Music & Youth and Kids & Family clusters will move to Stockholm and Berlin. However, Amsterdam remains the technical play-out hub for the channels.
