How did you get to this strategy? We started in late October, as I recall. It came from, I suppose, two things: one is, we’re an Oct. 1 fiscal year so by mid-October we had the final results for the last fiscal year, which was a difficult year for everybody in advertising support media—and that included ABC News. We did extraordinarily well considering the circumstances but the extent to which we were vulnerable to a downturn in the advertising market really sobered me.  That led to the second thing, which was really taking a longer-term look at the trend lines of the last five or even ten years, and asking ourselves the question: are we reasonably secure in what we’re doing and how we’re doing it going out into the future, even on a worse-case scenario and I became concerned that we were not in as strong shape as we needed to be to make sure that we could do all the work we need to do for the next five or ten years.

My understanding, both from what you said and from people at Disney, this is not something that was mandated. This was not something that came down from (Disney-ABC Television Group President) Anne (Sweeney) or higher up. This is something that came from you. This was mandated by the circumstances, frankly by the numbers, which speak louder than anyone—even Anne. The facts are the facts. If you looked at the facts it just showed that going out to the future, if these trend lines continued, it was not a good situation.

You could have kept going for a while with things as is but then you might have lost the control to make the changes you want to do it. I think it is important to seize the initiative while you still can but there’s another factor here, too, that’s been very much on my mind, For any organization to be healthy, we need to offer our colleagues, our employees a work environment where they can come and develop a career over the next five, ten, twenty years and be competitive and be stimulated and feel fulfilled. Simply writing down an old style business is not going to attract and keep the best people. …

My guess is you’re going to lose some people you’d rather not lose. That’s always a danger. I’m very pleased and proud the company is offering the voluntary plan because it gives people more control over their lives, which I think is very valuable. We do reserve the right if some people are indispensable to decline it but we will be very judicious in using that right. At the same time, you do end up with people who really want to be here.

How many people have to leave to avoid layoffs? I haven’t gone into specific numbers. What I have said is it’s substantial and I have said that it is larger than any other that we’ve done since I’ve been here in 13 years. … We had one in 2000 that was north of 100.  That gives you some order of magnitude.

Does it have to do with hitting a financial number versus a staff number? The way we went was what changes are possible and make sense structurally in the organization … and then backing out to say if we do that what consequences does that have for headcount and what does it have for costs. We didn’t start with a target number and solve for that number. We started with, ok, if we’re really going to change the place and take full advantage of digital and frankly make some structural changes that we probably should have made before anyway, what does that yield us? It’s not just the number of people; it’s who the people are. If you have the right people in these jobs, we’ll be very strong.

What about ABCNews.com, which wasn’t really mentioned yesterday? How do you see your cross platforms fitting into your structure? First of all, our digital operation has been the area of clear growth over the last several years. It started from a very modest base but it’s gotten to be a significant contributor to what we do overall. Whatever we do want to make sure we maintain that growth and, if anything, accelerate it.

Part of that is by making sure they have the resources and that the resources are deployed the right way. Part of it is also a matter of making sure we’re integrated more completely and more effectively with the programs. We cannot afford to have silos anymore. We can’t have ABCNews.com over there and the broadcast people in a different place. The two have to be seamless. We’ve made progress in that, some places more than others, but we have a fair amount of upside to be made. We have done some restructuring in last three to six months that have helped us, particularly on the GMA section of the site and on World News since Diane has gone in but there’s more upside there for us.

Moving forward, are there any structural changes to ABCNews.com? No, except for a continuation and increasing what we have, which is the cross-integration with the programs. Some of the changes we’re making with our digital journalists and producers will facilitate that. Those people will be able to deal more easily with .com, rather than simply thinking about producing a piece for broadcast.

How do you divide between traditional and digital? Some programs will have all of their producers be digital producers; a digital producer might for a certain story produce in a more traditional way. You can have a person who can shoot and edit raw material but if they go out to do a Barbara Walters interview, chances are they’ll do it in a more traditional way. The fact that you’re a digital journalist doesn’t mean that’s the only way you produce. ... We won’t simply switch everything over to digital.

When you come to the end of this process this year, what percentage will be digital? It varies program to program—a minimum of a third.

Are you looking at ways to add revenue? For instance, your iPhone app is currently free. I’m not aware of any business you’ve ever been able to cut to success. You have to grown the top line in addition to addressing costs. And we have been growing digital. We are looking for more ways to grow digital and we’ll always be looking for more opportunities on the broadcast network.