The leisure enterprise has seen larger days.
Film and TV manufacturing throughout the U.S. rose 18% ultimate yr nonetheless lagged 2022 ranges, in response to ProPro, which tracks studio productions. Theatrical ticket product sales fell 3.3% in 2024 and keep nearly 25% down from pre-pandemic ranges. Media conglomerates are spinning off cable channels at a dizzying price, an acknowledgment of the damage that streaming has carried out to that cash cow. And tech giants like Amazon and Apple, which elbowed into the content material materials enterprise various years prior to now, have found that it’s loads harder to make a gift that people care about than it’s to advertise them paper towels and iPhones.
Cutbacks and layoffs are the order of the day. However for some motive the spirit of economizing didn’t extend to the chief suites. Seven of the ten CEOs and media barons whose pay packages we take a look at as part of our annual survey of compensation purchased raises. And normally, the bumps had been double-digit ones even if their outcomes had been usually lackluster at best.
“When the stock is up, CEOs always take credit score rating, nonetheless when it plunges, they not usually take responsibility,” says Charles Elson of the Faculty of Delaware’s John L. Weinberg Coronary heart for Firm Governance. “There must be additional alignment between pay packages and effectivity so when there’s a foul yr, the CEOs take additional of profitable.”
To be trustworthy, a couple of of those executives will end up banking far decrease than what’s reported. That’s because of the stock awards and decisions signify trustworthy value as of the grant date and don’t replicate exact dollar portions acquired by executives. If the company’s value shrinks, so does their compensation. In any case, if it should improve, their windfall may probably be even bigger than it initially appeared in public filings.
The pay packages may be largely undiminished, nonetheless our guidelines of excessive executives shrank. Paramount Worldwide hoped to have finalized its sale to Skydance Media by now, nonetheless the Trump administration and the president’s lawsuit in opposition to “60 Minutes” appears to be holding up regulatory approval. Nonetheless, Bob Bakish, who left Paramount amid the company’s deal talks with Skydance, has already profited handsomely, incomes $87 million ultimate yr, which contains $69.3 million in severance. Then there’s Endeavor, which went private as soon as extra after 4 years as a publicly traded agency. Ari Emanuel, the brash agent who led the company’s whipsaw transformation, purchased a $173.8 million cash payout for his efforts.
Paramount Worldwide will most likely rapidly have agency, as most enterprise observers rely on that completely different media companies are trying to find patrons (speculation usually services on Warner Bros. Discovery, which has endured two traumatic mergers over the earlier seven years and formally separated its TV enterprise from its studio and streaming operations). Consultants like Elson say companies usually have good causes for selling themselves or shopping for each other. Nevertheless he moreover notes that there’s usually a strong financial incentive for the people on the excessive to make these kinds of affords.
“The synergies that embody a merger shall be pretty helpful, nonetheless it’s a should to make sure that the value monetary financial savings are literally there,” he says. “Typically these affords are additional ego pushed and switch into disasters.”
Historically, media chieftains are a lot better compensated than leaders in numerous industries. A variety of that has to do with the possession development of leisure conglomerates corresponding to Comcast and Fox, which have dual-class stock. That gives the households behind them loads tighter administration, enabling them to reward themselves with out risking loads interference from widespread shareholders. This, in flip, skews the pay packages of media companies like Disney and Netflix, which aren’t run by households nonetheless justify rewarding their executives with massive bonuses and decisions because of they’re part of the equivalent peer group. It helps that the boards of these companies are generally loaded with sympathetic allies.
“Board members themselves are properly paid,” says Rosanna Landis Weaver of shareholder advocacy group As You Sow. “It’s a very comfy gig. And no board member ever purchased requested to depart for saying, ‘Let’s pay the CEO additional.’”
Working a media agency requires a very particular set of experience. A worthwhile media CEO should be most of the people face of a corporation — telegenic, amiable, able to work a room — and as well as operate an envoy to Wall Highway at a time when consumers have grown additional skeptical in regards to the long-term effectively being of the leisure enterprise.
Merely look how robust it was for Bob Chapek, the short-lived CEO of Disney, whose tenure was so rocky that the company reenlisted Bob Iger, the individual he succeeded, as his various. However when media conglomerates rationalize giving their leaders extravagant pay packages because of they’re frightened that one different agency goes to poach them or that they might go away of their very personal volition, they should perhaps assume as soon as extra.
“The issue in regards to the media enterprise is that these jobs are satisfying,” says David L. Yermack, professor of finance at NYU. “You get to have quite a few have an effect on on society, and shaping custom is fascinating work. Working a coal mine or being throughout the utilities enterprise isn’t anyplace near as fascinating.”
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Disney
Image Credit score rating: John Nacion for Choice Bob Iger, CEO
2024 compensation: $41.4M/+31%
Median employee compensation: $55,111
Iger pay ratio to median employee: 746How do you determine a job properly carried out? When it obtained right here to Iger’s $7.2 million bonus, Disney’s board gave him credit score rating for releasing “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which the family-friendly mannequin enthused was “one of the best grossing R-rated film ever,” along with for presiding over the best-attended D23 event in historic previous and fundamental a corporation dubbed actually one in every of America’s most trusted by no a lot much less an authority than Newsweek. It’s hardly an empirical analysis, nonetheless Iger did have a worthwhile 2024, one which observed the studio topping its rivals on the sphere office and releasing streaming hits like “Shōgun.” For Iger’s efforts, his comparatively modest $1 million wage purchased augmented by higher than $30 million in stock decisions and awards, along with $523,685 in personal air journey and $1.4 million in security. It pays to rule the Magic Kingdom.
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Netflix
Image Credit score rating: Getty Images (Sarandos); Courtesy {photograph} (Peters) Ted Sarandos, Co-CEO
2024 compensation: $61.9M/+24.3%Greg Peters, Co-CEO
2024 compensation: $60.3M/+50.2%Median employee compensation: $215,503
Sarandos/Peters pay ratio to median employee: 287/280Bingeing has been glorious to Netflix’s co-leaders. Closing yr, the company targeted $40 million in full compensation apiece. Every purchased higher than 50% of that, due to the streamer’s stellar effectivity. The company ended 2024 with 301.6 million subscribers (up 16%) and generated working income of higher than $10 billion. The stock soared 89% for the yr, dispelling any doubts in regards to the unusual two-in-a-box administration development. For 2024, Sarandos and Peters each acquired a $12 million cash bonus plus stock valued at $42.7 million, with Netflix’s compensation committee citing “our glorious relative stock value effectivity as compared with constituents of the S&P 500.” Within the meantime, co-founder and chairman Reed Hastings’ pay bundle deal dropped to $1.75 million ultimate yr (from $11.3 million in 2023). Don’t go the hat for Hastings — he owned 4.23 million Netflix shares as of early April.
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Warner Bros. Discovery
Image Credit score rating: Virisa Yong for Choice David Zaslav, CEO and president
2024 compensation: $51.9M/+4.4%
Median employee compensation: $130,316
Zaslav pay ratio to median employee: 398Few would stage to the marriage of Warner Bros. and Discovery and declare it a glittering success. The media conglomerate’s market cap hovers at $22 billion, roughly half of the place it stood in 2022 when the companies joined forces. Like many leisure giants, Warner Bros. Discovery has struggled to deal with the contraction of the theatrical movie enterprise and the collapse of cable, its main revenue. However Zaslav, the precept architect of the merger, continues to be rewarded handsomely. His $51.9 million compensation bundle deal includes a $23.9 million bonus (higher than 100% of the objective amount), along with a $3 million base wage, one different $23 million in stock awards, a $17,446 automotive allowance and 250 hours of personal flight time yearly on the corporate jet.
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Comcast
Image Credit score rating: Virisa Yong for Choice (Roberts); Golden Globes (Cavanagh) Brian Roberts, CEO and chairman
2024 compensation: $33.9M/-4.5%Michael Cavanagh, President
2024 compensation: $28.25M/-4.5%Median employee compensation: $89,237
Roberts pay ratio to median employee: 380Roberts and chief lieutenant Cavanagh purchased massive bonuses ultimate yr — merely not as fat as that they had been in 2023. Comcast grew on the best and bottom traces in 2024, whereas free cash transfer (an element used to search out out authorities compensation) declined 3.8% to $12.5 billion. The board’s compensation committee determined that the company’s excessive execs had been entitled to cash bonuses equal to 109% of objective. Nevertheless every Roberts and Cavanagh “requested that they not receive higher than 100% of their objective bonuses,” in response to Comcast’s proxy submitting, settling for $7.5 million. In discussing their effectivity, the company cited the plan led by the pair to spin off NBCUniversal’s cable TV networks (excluding Bravo) and complementary digital belongings. The model new public agency, Versant, is able to separate from its guardian by the highest of 2025.
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Fox Corp.
Image Credit score rating: WireImage (Lachlan Murdoch); Getty Images (Rupert Murdoch) Lachlan Murdoch, CEO and authorities chair
2024 compensation: $23.8M/+9.3%Rupert Murdoch, Chairman emeritus
2024 compensation: $21.2M/-7.7%Median employee compensation: $89,068
Lachlan Murdoch pay ratio to median employee: 267Rupert Murdoch, 94, formally retired in November 2023. Nevertheless the TV info, sports activities actions and leisure agency he constructed continued to pay him generously. As chairman emeritus, he had a compensation bundle deal totaling $21.2 million for the fiscal yr ended June 2024, which included $8.6 million value of stock and decisions and a $2.3 million bonus “following 71 years of service to the company,” per Fox Corp.’s annual proxy submitting. Eldest son Lachlan Murdoch, who now runs the media empire, observed his pay climb 9.3% largely due to a $6 million cash bonus (versus $4.5 million in fiscal 2023) primarily based totally on “quantitative” and “qualitative” effectivity parts evaluated by the board. “Fox as quickly as as soon as extra delivered sturdy operational and financial ends in fiscal 2024,” the company acknowledged in its proxy submitting, along with Fox Info ending the interval as a result of the No. 1 cable neighborhood amongst full viewers for the eighth straight yr.
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Apple
Image Credit score rating: Virisa Yong for Choice Tim Put together dinner, CEO
2024 compensation: $74.6M/+18%
Median employee compensation: $114,738
Put together dinner pay ratio to median employee: 650After docking Put together dinner’s stock incentives in 2023, Apple determined that it wasn’t paying him ample. Based mostly totally on an analysis of CEO compensation at “peer companies” along with Amazon, Disney and Netflix, the tech massive boosted the objective value of Put together dinner’s equity award for fiscal 2024 from $40 million to $50 million. Put together dinner’s stock grants had been calculated to be value $58 million. To verify, the tech massive saved minting money: Apple revenue hit a file $391 billion (up 2%) for the fiscal yr ended September 2024, whereas web income declined 3% to (solely!) $93.7 billion. Of remember: Apple’s suppliers biz, which contains the App Retailer and Apple TV+, generated $96 billion for the yr, up nearly 13%. In justifying Put together dinner’s enlarged stock grant, the board’s compensation committee cited “the have an effect on his administration has on the company’s short-term and long-term success.”
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Amazon
Image Credit score rating: FilmMagic Andy Jassy, CEO
2024 compensation: $1.6M/+17.6%
Median employee compensation: $37,181
Jassy pay ratio to median employee: 43Don’t be fooled: Jassy earns additional for working the e-commerce mega-company than the amount listed for his 2024 compensation on Amazon’s proxy assertion. As reported beneath SEC tips, the CEO was paid $1.6 million ultimate yr. Nevertheless the majority of Jassy’s remuneration is in stock awards that vest over various years (which Amazon reported as compensation for 2021). Based mostly on Amazon, Jassy’s 2024 “realized compensation” elevated by 37%, to $40.1 million, because of agency’s stock value helpful properties. That obtained right here after his realized comp decreased by 12% in 2023. In his April 10 annual letter to shareholders, Jassy touted the company’s rising leisure lineup, along with originals like “Reacher,” “Fallout,” “The Boys” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Vitality” and reside sports activities actions identical to the NFL’s “Thursday Night Soccer” — with the NBA and Nascar coming later this yr.