Radio has not been a great business for Bloomberg. Someone yelling over a megaphone in New York City's Time Square could probably attract a bigger audience than WBBR. Don't be surprised if Bloomberg exits radio entirely as it is a poor medium for financial news.

Though the media part gets all the sizzle, the core of Bloomberg remains a data business. It provides prices on everything from gold to oil to pork bellies. Bloomberg terminals can spit out data on stocks and bonds with such variety and volume that many analysts and portfolio managers simply cannot live without them.

When I started with the company, Wall Streeters proudly boasted of having their own terminals. Now, they are lucky if they get to share one as financial services firms under pressure from their new government masters cut costs. Bloomberg is no doubt feeling the impact of these changes.

For years, the company operated pretty freely, worrying about any payoff later. Those days are clearly over. Though Bloomberg says it plans to hire 1,000 people in its news and finance departments over the next year, you have to wonder if other jobs are going to be cut in other departments or if the hiring plans will be scaled back.

Bloomberg News also hired many high-priced journalists such as Albert Hunt of the Wall Street Journal and Margaret Carlson of Time magazine over the past few years. Their contracts may have to be renegotiated. Bloomberg Markets, the company's glossy monthly magazine, could be feeling the heat as well. The well-regarded publication will face difficulty surviving as a stand-alone entity.

Though the cuts represent less than 1 percent of Bloomberg's workforce, they underscore how the severity of the downturn in advertising, particularly from financial companies, is hurting media companies.

Speculation about whether Mike Bloomberg will retain a controlling interest in the company that made him a billionaire will only intensify.