A couple more classic posts at TWCC, both by Lightning. First he calls the layoffs "firings". Their layoffs, doofus. There's a huge difference. 
They are not sending people home until things turn around like a manufacturing company does. According to the article they are "staffing cuts" and the NBC statement refers to losing "valued employees". That sounds like a permanent thing as they are cutting positions and the people that currently fill them.
I guess that depends on the economy. If it continues to worsen, then I'd say that that's a very real possibility. 
It's not about the economy, the first sentence of the NBC release is just a smoke screen, it's a part of the continuing takeover of TWC by NBC Universal. The second sentence in the release talks about
"cost synergies as a part of a company reorganization". This is the real reason for these staffing cuts. To put it in everyday english they were saying that "now that we have control, we are going to cut costs and make TWC return a good profit to the parent company."
the following quote is from
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2008/11/nbc_fires_twc_environmental_un.html"The economic realities of recent months have created challenges for everyone in our business. In addition, when NBC Universal purchased the Weather Channel earlier this year, we expected that there would be cost synergies as part of a company reorganization. While it is always difficult to lose valued employees, we are doing our best to minimize the impact, and remain committed to providing the highest quality content that our viewers have come to expect from the Weather Channel."
