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CBS Reups Les Moonves Through 2015 
This is going to seem like deja vu all over again for regular DHD readers. But Michael Nathanson, the senior analyst for Sanford C Bernstein & Co, has released his 2nd annual CEO/CFO compensation review in the media business. And in the 21-page report summarized by Broadcasting & Cable, he's criticizing their outsized pay just like I have been. "News Corp's recent hiring of Chase Carey as President/Chief Operating Officer was re-affirmation of the fact that media executives, to borrow F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous quip, are ‘different from you and me,'" he wrote. "Given the relatively poor one-, three- or five-year performances of most of these stocks, the rich compensation packages look even more extraordinary... While the equity shareholders felt the pain of value destruction, did the media conglomerate executives?" Nah! Here's the Hall Of Shame:
CBS CEO Leslie Moonves, who was paid $31.9 million last year.
Disney CEO Robert Iger, who earned $30.6 million
News Corp #2 Chase Carey, who could haul in $43.1 million over the next year.
News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch, who took home $27.5 million
Viacom's Philippe Dauman, who was paid $23 million.
Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, who made $19.9 million.
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Disgusting. We really need to raise hell on this issue. It doesn’t make sense. Meanwhile Fox has been laying off lower level executives, etc. as has Disney and both pay like crap. Seriously, does these men really deserve this much money for their jobs? I mean, kudos to them for getting it but why are the big public companies giving it in the first place? Argh.
I don’t mind people making good money. However, I do think that the good money has to be earned, and should bear some relation to the performance of the company and how happy that performance makes the shareholders.
A lot of people look at those out-sized salaries and say it’s capitalism run amok. I don’t think it’s capitalism, I think it’s feudalism. It’s a sense of entitlement at the expense of others, no matter how well you do your job, because you lucked into the top spot, and that justifies everything.
When you think that Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE, the third largest market cap corporation the world, with 350,000 employees, makes less (all in) than most of the entertainment executives listed, you know something is seriously broken. Immelt is not an exception – the list of executives with much bigger jobs and responsiblity, is a very long one. CBS is smaller than ANY GE division, by many many times.
yes, if a publically traded entertainment company is doing poorly or below expectations it should be felt across the board starting from the very top.
really do they deserve these kind of salaries anyway? and it’s more than that when accounting for the non-monetary compensation like using corp jets for personal use and they do! If I have a little money to invest I wouldn’t choose one these companies or the other studios when these CEOs, Chairmans will get paid first. Ask about their day to day work life, there’s just no way they deserve these salaries.
Being a big CEO is like being a big actor. There are hundreds of people who could do your job, but you’re the one who lucked into it. Yet we still pay these people as if they’re THE ONE AND ONLY PERSON WHO COULD EVER DO THIS, EVER. It’s an outdated business model and someday it will change.
The reason for the outsize compensation is that the The Media biz is a very highly specialized type of biz and the people who run it are in a very small class of executives… The belief in the boardrooms, which is false by the way, is that you just can’t hire any Fortune 500 CEO to run a media company… Thus, it makes the pool of top line Media CEO’s very rare animals and gives them tremendous leverage to beat these pay packages out of the biggest studios… It also works in reverse, you never see a fired media CEO working in any other executive capacity in a different corporate field… They are considered to be too profligate and weird to run more traditional companies….
Last I checked (about 2 minutes ago), this was a free country and all those Executives we hired by Boards of Directors. Boards of Directors are appointed by the stockholders.
If you don’t like the way they are being paid, become a stockholder and tell the Board, otherwise, it’s none of yours or Nikke Finke’s business.
Gee BB, great idea! Ok, Disney is at about $25/share, so I’ll buy three shares, making me officially a stockholder. Then I am SURE the Disney Board of Directors will totally accept my suggestion that Bob Iger get his salary cut for the sake of the corporation and we shareholders. And I am SURE good ‘ol Bob will gladly agree. Christ, what planet do you live on? BTW, it IS our business (and Nikki’s) when it comes to publically-traded companies.
What we all would dearly like to see: a closed-door meeting at with the following attend:
CBS CEO Leslie Moonves
Disney CEO Robert Iger
News Corp #2 Chase Carey
News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch
Viacom’s Philippe Dauman
Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes
And as smart-as-a-whip I-don’t-owe-nuthin-to-Michael Robert Iger is talking, a GIGANTIC SINKHOLE opens up beneath the building and SWALLOWS the whole thing, CEOs and their flunky entourages, and then suddenly, nature is quiet again.
And all the studios quickly put another person in each CEO’s position (for far less money) and the studios haven’t skipped a beat, all is fine and cool, as if nothing had happened.
MORALE:
EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE HIGH PRICED EGO-ASSES CAN BE REPLACED IN A NANOSECOND.
NONE WILL BE MISSED, AND THE STUDIOS WOULD BECOME MORE PROFITABLE, THE SHAREHOLDERS’ SMILES BIGGER, AND THE EMPLOYESS HAPPIER.
Yes, Virgina, the world would indeed be a happier place….
to BB above, from Viacom’s corporate website:
Q: What is the difference between VIA and VIA.B?
A: Viacom has two classes of common stock: Class A, which is the voting stock, and Class B, which is the non-voting stock. There is no difference between the two classes except for voting rights; they generally trade within a close price range of each other. There are, however, far more shares of Class B outstanding, so most of the trading occurs in that class.
good luck trying to find some via class A.
that’s incentive…
Attaining “mogul” status in Hwood means U get paid huge sums for relatively small-scale ops. (vs. Exxon, GE, Walmart and the like) It’s always been this way since the dawn of Hwood (read up and U’ll see how the template got created). And agreed with previous posting – once U achieve mogul-status, then U’re in the club and U keep failing up – or over – at these astronomical rates. Really, Moonves making THAT much in a depressed ad market? Oh, he’s a media mogul…never mind!
Well (to BB), it isn’t quite that simple. In reality, board members are selected by an executive committee and are then presented as a take-it-or-leave-it to shareholders who have no real information, time, or recourse to make another choice. Most of them are simply up/down choices and the only people who really have power are massive shareholders/insiders. Even if it really was a transparent process, there’s a tremendous conflict of interest when it comes to compensation because the Boards are made up of CEOs and execs from other companies, so any salary decisions they make at GE, for example, affect their salaries (positively) by way of comparison.
It’s like when the Senate votes to increase their own salaries – there’s a massive conflict of interest. The difference is that if the Senators voted to increase their pay to $20m a year they would all immediately be voted out of office, whereas there’s very little cohesion in stockholder groups. We’re all Americans until the day we die, so we care about what the Senators do, whereas we’re in and out of stock positions all the time.
You want to see a corporation turn around faster than you can say “audit”? Let the CEOs take net profits.
You should post what each exec. gets on top of their pay. IE corporate private jet use, how much vacation time a year, what the companies are also paying for: personal chefs, drivers, airplanes. I know one executive at a public company that had use of a private jet, flew in 4 days a week, and flew out. while at the company he was more of a “figure head” than anything else. and that’s nothing compared to what’s going on.
yes it is highly specialized, but… the head head head head guy doesn’t need to be a former development guy to know what works. and there are countless examples of people coming from other areas to run entertainment companies or channels for that matter.
Jeff is doing a effen great job. Just ask Zucker, hehehe
When you think that Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE, the third largest market cap corporation the world, with 350,000 employees, makes less (all in) than most of the entertainment executives listed, you know something is seriously broken. Immelt is not an exception – the list of executives with much bigger jobs and responsiblity, is a very long one. CBS is smaller than ANY GE division, by many many times.
Comment by Jeffrey Glick — July 22, 2009 @ 8:14 am
Why do they do it? Because they can. Just look at the Marciano case happening downtown L.A. as I write this comment.
some of these guys are REALLY fucking good at their jobs. and these giant corporations that keep shelling out entertainment and media don’t exactly run themselves.
They make more money in a day than I’ve made in the past year. If they want to improve their numbers (and the general economy), they should spend half their salary on hiring people that would then in turn buy their DVDs and the products being advertised on their TV shows.
All I’m asking for is 30k a year. They could each hire 400 people like me and still have multimillion dollar compensation packages.
Just think of all the ‘underlings’ making 3-5M — or more