Charter Communications, the company that runs the SportsNet channels for the Dodgers and Lakers, is cutting back programming on those channels.

Live coverage of the Dodgers and Lakers games is not expected to be affected. Instead, Charter is canceling “Behind the Sport” and reducing new episodes of “Backstage: Dodgers” and “Backstage: Lakers” to one per month, according to company spokeswoman Maureen Huff.

The Dodgers and Lakers are among many teams that have launched channels so fans could get 24/7 access to their favorite team. However, viewership data in Los Angeles and elsewhere has shown that most fans are primarily interested in watching the game.

Huff said “a few positions” have been eliminated.

“These programming adjustments are routine and do not signal any broader operational changes,” Huff said.

The changes come amid turmoil in the regional sports network industry. As consumers increasingly abandon cable and satellite broadcasts in favor of streaming, broadcast rights deals that pay teams based on an economic model of subscribers paying for a regional sports network, whether they watch it or not, have become outdated and often unprofitable.

The Bally Sports channels have been in bankruptcy court for 19 months. Warner Bros. Discovery last year dumped its four regional sports networks.

Charter runs no other regional sports network besides the SportsNet channels, which it inherited when it bought Time Warner Cable in 2016.

As a profitable company that generated $55 billion in revenue last year by providing broadband, cable, streaming and telephone services, Charter could not escape its $8.35-billion contract with the Dodgers or its $3-billion contract with the Lakers by filing for bankruptcy.

Lon Rosen, the Dodgers’ executive vice president, said Dodgers fans should not be concerned about SportsNet LA, which Charter markets under the Spectrum brand.

“We continue to have a good working relationship with Spectrum,” Rosen said.

The Dodgers own SportsNet LA. However, Charter owns SportsNet and has registered it as a separate entity. So, in theory, Charter could essentially tell the Lakers what Bally Sports told the Angels: Renegotiate at a discount, or risk SportsNet filing for bankruptcy, which could mean even less money for the team in a streaming-first future.

“Nothing like that has occurred,” said Tim Harris, the Lakers’ president of business operations. “Spectrum is an amazing partner and we look forward to working with them for years to come.”

One of downtown Los Angeles’ familar tenants is pulling up stakes as the office rental market continues to contract from shrinking occupancy stoked by the pandemic.

Financial services firm Wedbush Securities has begun its move from a prominent office tower to Pasadena, where it will occupy much smaller offices meant to accommodate employees who now work remotely much of the time.

The firm is leaving behind Wedbush Center, which overlooks the Harbor Freeway and sports two signs on top bearing the company name. Wedbush has been headquartered in the Wilshire Boulevard building since 2001 and its lease expires next year.

“It’s a big deal, a very big decision for the firm,” President Gary Wedbush said of the move. “The pandemic and COVID created a different kind of office for us.”

With most employees required to be in the office only a third of the time, Wedbush is creating an office oriented toward shared workspaces that can be used as needed by various employees instead of assigned desks, he said.

The move was also influenced by the changed nature of downtown’s financial district since thousands of office workers departed during the COVID-related shutdown and probably won’t return again in pre-pandemic numbers. Many shops and restaurants remain closed and office tenants have said the streets feel less safe than they used to.

Although Wedbush said “downtown has been fantastic for us,” other locations have become more attractive. “There are places like Pasadena that seem to have recovered more fully from the pandemic than downtown Los Angeles has. That was a part of the decision-making” to move.

The firm leases more than 100,000 square feet at Wedbush Center but will occupy about 20,000 square feet in an office complex on Lake Avenue in one of Pasadena’s leading commercial districts.

“The amenities on Lake Avenue are fantastic,” Wedbush said. “Casual restaurants to really fine dining, fitness centers — it just had everything.”

Wedbush’s move, which will take place formally in the first half of 2025, reflects a trend that has been affecting downtown and much of Los Angeles County for the last few years, real estate brokerage CBRE said in a recent report on office leasing.

“The Greater Los Angeles office market continued its search for the bottom” in the third quarter, CBRE said, as both tenants and landlords “navigate the ongoing supply and demand imbalance exacerbated by the shift to hybrid and remote work.”

Companies adapting to new work models are leaving behind large chunks of office space, and the change is particularly noticeable downtown, where CBRE said overall vacancy is more than 30%, triple the amount considered to be a healthy balance between tenant and landlord interests.

Wedbush Securities’ shift to hybrid work, with people in the office some days and not others, created the chance to make a different kind of office with a smaller footprint and more shared spaces to collaborate or work away from a traditional desk, Wedbush said.

About 70% of the office will be considered “hotel” space where employees can choose a workstation on days they are present while the remaining 30% will be offices for financial advisors and others who need privacy to meet with clients.

A stark difference will be that the shared workstations will be around the windows with views of the city and the offices will be in the center of the building. In the old arrangement, individual offices were much larger and occupied the prime space along the windows, Wedbush said.

One of the two floors Wedbush Securities leased in Pasadena has a rooftop deck that Wedbush plans to make into an outdoor office space with conference tables, workstations where people can plug in their computers and places to unwind.

“It’s not just going to be a couple of tables and umbrellas,” he said. “The opportunity to build out this new space was a big driver in us moving out of our building that we’ve loved for so, so many years.”

Wedbush Securities was co-founded in 1955 by Wedbush’s father, Edward, in Los Angeles and now has close to 900 employees in 28 cities across the country, Wedbush said. “We’re really proud of our Los Angeles legacy.”

Wedbush’s decision to dramatically shrink its headquarters underscores not only the continued struggles of the office rental market in the wake of the pandemic but broader vulnerabilities in commercial real estate throughout L.A. County.

A report released by real estate services firm NAI Capital said that in the third quarter of 2024, Los Angeles County’s commercial real estate market experienced a sharp 18.4% year-to-date decline in sales volume and a rise in real estate cap rates, a metric used to estimate an investor’s rate of return based on the income that the property is expected to generate.

It may be a low point in the real estate cycle for property sales, NAI Capital Chief Executive Chris Jackson said.

“With cap rates on the rise, California regulations, and high interest rates throughout 2024, the commercial real estate market took a bit of a dip” with office properties “hit particularly hard,” Jackson said. “However, with interest rates expected to decline more substantially in 2025, we anticipate a significant rebound in real estate sales.”

Sales are being further limited by taxes and government fees, particularly Measure ULA, the property transfer tax in Los Angeles that took effect in 2023, the report said. Dubbed the “mansion tax,” Measure ULA imposed a 4% tax on real estate transactions over $5 million and a 5.5% tax on those exceeding $10 million. In June, those thresholds increased to $5.15 million and $10.3 million.

The tax has contributed to a nearly 40% year-over-year drop in sales of office, retail, industrial and multifamily properties, or $1.9 billion below last year’s total, the report said.

Film and TV production company Legendary Entertainment has bought out the remaining 50% stake owned by Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group, signifying a coda to China’s once-lofty hopes of becoming a major player in Hollywood.

The Burbank studio self-financed the transaction with cash on its balance sheet and did not use outside funding, Legendary said Monday. The company said it still has “significant excess liquidity” to finance its current business and planned expansion efforts. Legendary did not disclose the amount it paid to acquire Wanda’s stake, though company chief executive Josh Grode said it was a “very attractive price.”

Now that the buyout is complete, Legendary will be solely owned by company management and funds managed by private equity firm Apollo Global Management, which took a minority stake in the “Dune” and “Godzilla x Kong” studio in 2022 with a $760-million investment that helped buy down Wanda’s interest.

Last year, Legendary also got a five-year, $800-million loan led by J.P. Morgan.

“It’s just an exciting moment for the company,” Grode told The Times in an interview.

With company management and Apollo now owning roughly equal amounts of Legendary and jointly controlling the board, “We’re now fully aligned to realize a lot of the value that we built in the business, and we can start to really explore strategic growth opportunities that may have been hampered a little bit by the international component of our shareholders,” Grode said.

Wanda acquired Legendary in 2016 in a $3.5-billion deal viewed at the time as an indication of the deepening ties between Hollywood and China. Wanda chairman Wang Jianlin said at the time of the acquisition that the company wanted to have a “position in the global industry” and had planned to build what it said was the “world’s largest film and television studio” in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao.

But the company later retreated from those plans and faced greater headwinds breaking into Hollywood as the Chinese government clamped down on overseas investments, particularly those in the media and entertainment space.

Grode said the decision to buy out Wanda now was a “combination of factors,” including Legendary’s “significant amount of excess liquidity in the business.” (Wanda did not have voting control of the company.)

“They were a major shareholder in the company that was looking to monetize different assets, and we were in a position to be able to monetize their investment in the business,” he said.

Founded in 2004, Legendary built a name for itself by investing in such films as “Batman Begins” and the “Hangover” movies. The company has had a successful string of hits recently with the “Dune” movies, as well as selling the Millie Bobby Brown-led “Enola Holmes” to Netflix.