alt Hacker News538 was fun while it lasted. The podcasts were also a good listen.
Things got worse after Disney had their first round of layoffs. Their problem was they weren't profitable outside the presidential election years when interest peaked in the general public. 3 out of 4 years only diehard election polling wonks tuned in.
In theory corporate ownership was supposed to be the solution to that problem. Deep pockets to buffer through the lean years and maximally exploit the profitable content when the harvest arrives.
In practice, of course, corporate bean counting doesn't work on that latency scale. There's always a middle manager seeing fat that can be trimmed today, harvest be damned. But the financial argument was sound.