If “Good Morning America” or “World News” look any different in the coming weeks, it might be because ABC News is employing nearly 400 fewer people.

Earlier this week, ABC News, a unit of the Walt Disney Company, largely completed one of the most drastic rounds of budget cutbacks at a television news operation in decades, affecting roughly a quarter of the staff. The cutbacks promise to change ABC both on- and off-camera.

For some employees, like the longtime Los Angeles correspondent Brian Rooney, Friday was their last day. Mr. Rooney said his contract expired at “exactly the moment when they needed to shed an enormous amount from the payroll.” In an e-mail message, he compared it to “standing looking straight up when the bomb dropped.”

Personally, he said, the next step is scary. “I’m 58 years old with a wife, two daughters in school and a little dog who likes to be fed. They have cut me loose into the worst economy in my lifetime,” he said.