Jury may still be out.
Some of this may be nothing more than Cost Cutting Measures, thinly disguised as ‘righteous fury’. Networks often have a hard time snipping the more aged, MOST EXPENSIVE employees off the tree without provoking an age discrimination lawsuit or smear campaign.
Why should networks be any different than real companies?
A Company I used to work for got bought by another company and they came in and fired the entire management, some who were near retirement and had started the company decades ago...............