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The Great TV News Comp Depression

The industry-wide resetting of TV news contracts is now firmly underway, it seems, and most talent will be affected—at best by a smaller-than-anticipated cost-of-living raise, often by a pay cut, and, at worst, by a delicately choreographed defenestration.

Robin Roberts George Stephanopoulos
ABC News pays George Stephanopoulos and his Good Morning America co-hosts, Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan, more than $75 million a year, an expense that represents nearly half of the roughly $200 million in annual advertising revenue that GMA brings in. Photo: Earl Gibson III/WireImage
Dylan Byers
October 4, 2024

On the last day of July, on a hot, blue-sky morning in Paris, Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb, and many other stars of the NBCUniversal cinematic universe were gathered at the Musée de l’Homme, the network’s stunning studio home for the 2024 Olympics, set against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower just across the Seine. As television news assignments go, the Olympics are considered the crème de la crème—particularly in the summer, or in Europe, and especially if you’re fortunate enough to work for NBC, which has held U.S. broadcast rights to the Games for three and a half decades and counting, and spares no expense.