Frugal Café Blog Zone

Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on February 3, 2010

CBS News Anchor Katie Couric is the highest paid TV news personality in America, earning $14 million a year

Looks like CBS isn’t immune to Obama’s economic recession, nor oblivious to its failing viewership numbers. CBS anchor Katie Couric, one of Obama’s lead cheerleaders, faces a pay cut (good), while many others at CBS News will be laid off (not good). These paycuts and lay-offs are likely going to change the tune of reporting on America’s recession and unemployment. Nothing like having a lay-off or pay cut hit at home, right?

From Drudge Report, COURIC FACES PAY CUT; DEEP LAYOFFS HIT CBS NEWS:

CBSNEWS anchorwoman and 60 MINUTES contributor Katie Couric faces a dramatic pay cut at the network, insiders tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

CBS boss Les Moonves is determined to save money and trim expenses — from top to bottom — at the former crown jewel of broadcasting.

Couric, the highest paid TV news personality in history, commands over $14 million a year, plus bumps for non-EVENING NEWS appearances.

But her salary is now in the direct line of fire, network insiders explain, and a populist backlash against Couric’s cash is said to be forming inside the newsroom.

“She makes enough to pay 200 news reporters $75,000 a year!” demands a veteran producer. “It’s complete insanity.”

The angry source continues: “We report with great enthusiasm how much bankers are making, how it is out of step with reality during a recession. We’ll look at Katie!”

Couric’s $300,000 a week paycheck has become the obsession of disgruntled CBS staff, just as deep layoffs rock the fishbowl.

Dozens of employees — including staff members in D.C., San Francisco, Miami, London, Los Angeles and Moscow — are being let go, the NEW YORK OBSERVER reports.

Couric’s current CBS contract expires next year.

Wonder how the recession will affect MSNBC’s nutbar Keith Olbermann and HIS annual salary of $7.5 million. Maybe Olby and Couric will ask Dear Leader for a bailout.

Couric’s pending pay cut is rather belated. Let’s not forget this headline from summer of 2009:

Headline from June 2009... a few months later, Katie Couric got a mainstream media award

The New York Observer, D-Day at CBS News:

On the evening of Monday, Feb. 1, Katie Couric, anchor of the CBS Evening News, was wearing red. For the next half-hour, she tore through the headlines. There were allegations of bigotry among the federal air marshals in the U.S., an American church group accused of trafficking children in Haiti, faulty gas pedals in Toyotas, a suicide bombing in Baghdad, a massacre in Mexico and a bodybuilder in Latvia with a rippled back like a map of Switzerland. “Thank you for watching,” said Ms. Couric, at the end of the broadcast. “I’ll see you here tomorrow.”

Many of Ms. Couric’s viewers would return the following night. Much of Ms. Couric’s staff would not.

It had been a rough day at CBS News. Four and a half years earlier, CBS chief Les Moonves had joked in The New York Times Magazine about bombing the news division. And now, among the seasoned veterans of the newsroom, there was a sense that the detonation had finally gone off. Earlier that morning, CBS News executives and bureau chiefs, led by senior vice president Linda Mason, told their employees that 2009 had been a disastrous year in the ad market. They had no cable operation to buoy the sinking revenues. It’s not you, was the message, it’s us. Dozens of employees—including staff members in D.C., San Francisco, Miami, London, Los Angeles and Moscow—were being let go. The changes were effective immediately. There would be no buyouts. According to one longtime staff member, the network had long ago negotiated away most of the severance clauses in staff members’ contracts.

Word of the layoffs had first surfaced the previous Friday afternoon in the L.A. Times. Over the weekend, CBS staffers vacillated between acceptance of the situation and cautious optimism. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as reported? After all, the company was already lean. Where would top brass find 100 or so people to let go? Perhaps there was some stash of employees hidden on the digital side, some long-forgotten deal between, say, 60 Minutes and Yahoo, that would provide some bodies to lessen the blow?

But in the end, the cuts were surprisingly deep. By Monday afternoon, staffers from Washington to L.A. were sputtering in disbelief as they heard of top producers on the chopping block—particularly Mark Katkov and Jill Rosenbaum in D.C. and Roberta Hollander and Barbara Pierce in L.A. These were seasoned veterans, part of the old school known back in the Dan Rather days as “the Hard Corps.” Over the years, they had somehow managed to outlive every big buzz saw to cut through the newsroom. They knew how to get more from less. Each thought of himself as worth five producers at ABC News. Their theme song was Merle Haggard’s “Holding Things Together.” It was hard to imagine what the already third-place morning and evening news operations would look like without them.

The most disturbing news of the day for many observers was that Larry Doyle would no longer be working for CBS News.

Mr. Doyle, according to CBS News legend, joined the organization some 40 years ago, when then D.C. bureau chief Bill Small found him working as a porter at a Washington hotel. Mr. Small promptly made Mr. Doyle the bureau’s go-to “dogrobber”—the guy you sent into nasty situations to stare down snarling subjects and get the job done. From there, Mr. Doyle gradually worked his way up the news ladder, eventually becoming the network’s top war producer, churning out great television from every hellhole on the planet—including Baghdad, where he served as the network’s bureau chief during the early years of the ongoing war.

Reached the afternoon of Tuesday, Feb. 2, Dan Rather recounted various stories of Mr. Doyle’s heroism in the field, including his impressive management of gun-toting teenagers in Somalia. “He’s one of the all-time greats,” said Mr. Rather. “He’s the soul of the place.”

“This is a guy,” he added, “whom Ed Murrow would have been glad to have as his producer.”

CBS News employees who have lost their jobs will be happy to know that Congress may get a pay INCREASE… peachy! Glad to hear that Democrat politicians are so “in touch with America.” Way to go, Steny!

From Gateway Pundit, Dem Leader Rejects Congressional Pay Freeze Until Budget Is Balanced:

Well this makes sense. If you’re a political hack trying to squeeze every last dime out of taxpayers while you’re in public office.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Dem-Md.) says he rejects the idea of freezing Congressional pay until Congress can balance a budget.

More reading on Obama’s horrible economic recession & CBS News:
Frugal Café Blog Zone: Cutting Back? No Way: More Outrageous Spending in Obama’s White House… Where Everybody Knows the Union Bosses’ Names (video) and Michigan Taxpayers: Betcha Didn’t Know You’re Helping Pay for Millionaire Michael Moore’s Anti-Capitalism Movie and CBS Obama Cheerleader Katie Couric Wins MRC’s “Let Us Fluff Your Pillow Award for Obsequious Obama Interviews” (video)
HillBuzz: Is Katie Couric going to be fired soon?
Distressed-Assets Coalition: CBS News Braces For 100 Layoffs After Horrible Ratings
Another Black Conservative: Katie Couric : The Pay Czar Cometh
TVNewser, Media Bistro: CBS News Cuts: ‘Early Show’ Staffers Out, Technology Correspondent Daniel Sieberg Cut
Patterico’s Pontifications: Katie Couric’s Contract
The Wenatchee World: CBS layoffs won’t spare ‘60 Minutes’
GayPatriot: Hey Obama, Can You Spare A Job?
Gateway Pundit: Breaking: Unemployment at 9.7% – New Counting Method Saved or Created 541,000 Jobs and Nevada Governor Slams Obama: “Doesn’t He Know That Thousands of Vegas Families Are Suffering Because of His Failed Policies?” and Leading Democrat: “We’ve Got to Spend Our Way Out of This Recession” (Video) and Unreal. Climategate Junk Scientist Michael Mann Awarded Half a Million in Stimulus Cash and Crony Capitalism: Obama’s Example of Stimulus Success- $100 Million For 15 Jobs Created at Dem Donor’s Company and Evil. Dem’s Nationalized Health Care Plan Raises Taxes on Special Needs Children and How’s That Hopenchange Feel Now? Youth Unemployment Surges to Record High and Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac Execs Get Up to $6 Million in Pay and Thanks Barack. Hunger and Homelessness Spread In US Under Obama and Stimulus Cash Went to Nonexistent Zip Code Areas, Too and Jobs, Jobs, Jobs… Obama’s Biggest Failure in 2009 (Video) and Change! Obama’s Monthly Deficit Tops Bush’s Yearly Deficit and An Honest Appraisal- Hannity Gives Obama 3 F’s and an A+ and Liberal Politics at Its Best… Nearly Half of Detroit Is Unemployed
Greg Knapp, Big Government: Stimulus Wasted and Most Americans Know It
Flopping Aces: Obama’s New Budget: $5 Trillion More in Debt in Just Five Years
Philip Klein, American Spectator: Why Obama Is an Even Bigger Spender Than Bush and WH Sees Cumulative Deficits $2.1 Trillion Higher Than It Projected a Year Ago
Mcnorman’s Weblog: Majority Would Vote Against Obama
Joseph C. Phillips, Big Hollywood: Mr. President You Are Blocking the Sun
The Hill: Clyburn: ‘We’ve got to spend our way out of this recession’
VotingFemale: Obama: “I didn’t say anything negative about Las Vegas”; Progressive History Revisionism (abortion of a ‘mistake’)
Michelle Malkin: Debt deluge: Here comes the $1.6 trillion flood of red ink

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Tags: 60 Minutes, Barack Obama, CBS, CBS Evening News, CBS News, Dan Rather, economic recession, financial hardship, fringe media, Katie Couric, Keith Olbermann, Larry Doyle, lay-offs, layoffs, liberal media, mainstream media, MSM, news, Obama, Obama budget, political, politics, Pres. Obama, unemployment