"500 jobs will be cut" on the main site in Hamburg (north), in "all areas", said the company, a subsidiary of the German publisher Bertelsmann, in a press release.
RTL Group currently employs 7,500 people in Germany.
The group also wants to "reorganize" its portfolio of publications and focus on its flagship brands, "which represent around 70% of current sales".
In detail, the company will only keep about ten magazine brands, which it owns through its subsidiaries, like the publisher Grüner + Jahr, which it bought from its parent company Bertelsmann in 2021.
The German versions of the magazines GEO, Gala and Capital will be retained, as well as the German women's newspaper Brigitte and the news weekly Stern.
The rest of the titles, around twenty, will be "sold or discontinued", the group said.
These decisions were taken "in the context of the rapidly changing media landscape and the difficult macroeconomic situation", said Thomas Rabe, president of RTL Germany, quoted in the press release.
The magazine press has suffered a decline in favor of digital for several years.
But the energy crisis and the inflation of certain costs, such as paper, have worsened the economic situation of the sector.
Unions have criticized these announcements.
"For the inability to lead a profitable magazine publishing house recognized throughout Europe towards digital transformation, Bertelsmann is now dismantling the RTL magazine publishing house in Hamburg", lamented the organization Ver.di, in a statement.
Management has for its part promised an investment of "80 million euros until 2025", mainly in digital, for the magazines that will remain in its portfolio.
RTL Group owns 56 television channels and 36 radio stations in Europe, and newspapers, mainly in France, Germany and Luxembourg.
At the end of 2022, Bertelsmann had given up selling its majority stake of 48.3% in the M6 Group (owner of the M6, W9, 6ter, Gulli and Paris Première channels and RTL, RTL2 and Fun Radio radios).
© 2023 AFP