Here's a
link to a study done by University of Missouri journalism professor emeritus
Vernon Stone.The data is ten years old but generally considered still reliable. Here's some interesting highlights:
A TV station’s highest paid anchor is typically its highest paid newsperson. Nationally, those top anchors showed a median of about $55,000 (rounded to the nearest thousand) and a mean of $96,000 in 1994(all emphasis added.) A few stations paying a million dollars or more can boost the mean dramatically.
The news director earns second only to the top on-camera star. The nation’s average news director was making $49,000 in mid-1994, and the salary pool average was a moderately higher mean of $57,000. The highest news director’s salary in the survey was $250,000.
The assistant news director was not far behind at a median of $46,000 and mean of $51,000. This position is found in less than half of all stations, most often in the larger, better paying operations.
A station’s average news anchor, all stations considered, weighed in at a $40,000 median and $59,000 mean. The highest a station in the survey paid its garden variety anchor was $555,000.
(-snip-)
Star anchors, the highest paid at their stations, draw broadcast journalism’s top money. In the 1994 survey, three news directors said their highest paid anchors made more than $1-million. That may mean around $2-million in New York or Los Angeles.
At the other extreme, a station’s top paid anchor in a small market may earn as little as $12,000. He or she would have to work 100 days or more to take in as much as the major market megastar gets in one day for doing a couple of newscasts. Even the median is seven to eight times greater in the 25 largest markets (a rounded $233,000) than in the 60 smallest ($31,000).
(-snip-)
The average TV station’s rank and file anchors make much less than its one or two stars. The median for 1994 was about $40,000, compared to $55,000 for the top anchor.
Typical anchors averaged about $22,000 in the 60 smallest markets, $31,000 in ADI 101-150, $46,000 in ADI 51-100, $75,000 in ADI 26-50 and -- now the big jump -- $149,000 at ADI 1-25 affiliates of ABC, CBS and NBC. The survey’s major-market top for garden variety anchors was $550,000.
(-snip-)
###
The disparity in salary compensation between the highest paid network and large market newsreaders and those in the "hinterlands" pretty much reflects the similar salary compensation disparity existing between labor and top management in the corporate setting. So it really should come as no surprise that top network and cable newsreaders, keeping an eye on that gratuitous tax cut, are hoping for continued Repiglican dominance in national politics.
As a friend of mine, who was a liberal talkshow host many years ago, says:"Give a man money, watch'em go funny."
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