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$100 Million Can't Stop Layoffs at Oxygen

The women's cable and Internet company Oxygen Media said Tuesday that it would lay off 65 full-time and part-time employees and close an office in Seattle. The announcement comes as the company reorganizes its online group after receiving $100 million in new funding. On Monday, the company had said it would cut spending in its online group.

The layoffs will affect 44 full-time and 21 part-time employees. Most work in the online group or a technical team in Seattle that supported it. In addition, Oxygen's 19 Web sites and their content will be redesigned and distributed around four branded sites: Oxygen.com, Young Audiences, Oprah and Thrive, the company said in Tuesday's announcement.

CEO Geraldine Laybourne founded the company two years ago as a source of information and entertainment for women that would be delivered on a dual platform of cable and Internet. On Tuesday, Laybourne emphasized that her company still sees the Internet as the core of her company's business, despite the cutbacks.

"We continue to believe that the Internet is made for women and that our future is built on the convergence of both TV and online," she said in Tuesday's release.

The company secured $100 million in financing Monday after several months of searching. In a press release Monday, Oxygen said it was planning to scale back its Internet operations and to devote more resources to developing its cable TV network. Funds from Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures will be used to produce new cable content and some Web programs that will "migrate to TV," a representative said Monday.

The $100 million investment is a good shot in the arm for the ailing cable and Internet company. But making the funding announcement at the same time as it says it will cut online spending suggests the company is trying to play down the significance of the cutbacks.

In a release issued Monday, Laybourne had argued that the Vulcan investment showed the viability of her original plan.

"This major investment in Oxygen by a company that intimately knows our business is a powerful vote of confidence in our ability to continue to attract and grow an audience for programming and content that is unavailable anywhere else," she said.

The funding allows the company to meet its plans for profitability in 2003, the company said. The money will last through the end of its current business plan in 2004.







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