Cuts at your favorite media organizations? Take comfort in the probability that the executives in charge are doing just fine.
From a New York Times story:
Top executives at the country’s largest media companies continued to reel in multimillion-dollar pay packages in 2009, a year of widespread cost-cutting throughout the industry. In several cases, the packages even increased from the year before.
At the top of the list is , chief executive of the , whose pay package in 2009 totaled almost $43 million, more than twice what he made in 2008, according to an analysis by Equilar, an research firm.
Not far behind was ‘s chief executive, , who was paid nearly $34 million, a 22 percent increase over 2008. , who controls CBS and Viacom, was paid more than $33 million from the two companies combined.
“Anybody who reads the business section knows the margins are being squeezed at media companies, so the fact that there are these huge packages makes no sense,” said James F. Reda, the founder of James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm with offices in New York and Atlanta.
Hey, it’s lonely at the top! You’ve got to get something out of the deal.
(Thanks, Romenesko.)
Source: New York Times
Image by kevindooley, licensed under Creative Commons.
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