Westwood One is cutting back at its local offices, including some layoffs last week at its Culver City headquarters and Valencia site, as well as at its Metro Network facility in the Miracle Mile district of Los Angeles.

Executives at Westwood One refused to comment on specific questions about the layoffs. Instead, the company issued a prepared statement through its New York office. “In our continuing efforts to make our company more efficient and manage expenses, we are implementing changes in the field,” the statement reads.

Industry analysts attributed the cuts to Viacom Inc.’s purchase last month of Infinity Broadcasting Corp., which has long owned an 18 percent stake in Westwood One.

Executives at Viacom and Infinity refused to comment.

Westwood One is a major provider of syndicated radio programming. It provides more than 150 programs on news, sports, music, talk, entertainment, features and live events to more than 7,500 radio stations around the world. Similarly, Metro Networks and Shadow Broadcast Services, both subsidiaries of Westwood One, provide information services to radio and TV stations, including traffic, news, weather and sports reports, as well as entertainment content.

Infinity on Feb. 21 was acquired by Viacom, strengthening its content ties and relationships to CBS, which is also owned by Viacom.

And as those assets are integrated, some Westwood One people are being let go.

“It smells of good old-fashioned cost cutting,” said Bishop Cheen, an analyst with First Union Securities Inc.

Publicly traded Westwood One reported net income of $42.3 million (36 cents per share) for the year ended Dec. 31, 2000, up from $23.9 million (33 cents per share) the year before. Revenue was $553.7 million vs. $358.3 million.

Consolidations are sweeping the broadcast industry and analysts say that the Viacom-Infinity merger led to Westwood’s belt tightening.

“With Viacom now bringing Infinity fully in-house, there are clearly some cost overlaps,” said Aram Sinnreich, senior media analyst with Jupiter Media Metrix.

Cheen said that the large infrastructure at Viacom is making some of Westwood One’s operations redundant.

The meltdown of the dot-com industry and the resulting advertising slowdown has also hurt Westwood One. The number of Internet companies advertising with Westwood One fell from 30 in 2000 to 10 in the first quarter of 2001.