{"id":471842,"date":"2026-05-06T20:49:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T20:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/471842\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T20:49:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T20:49:14","slug":"media-pay-packages-bob-iger-ted-sarandos-david-zaslav-salaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/471842\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Pay Packages: Bob Iger, Ted Sarandos, David Zaslav Salaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWarner Bros. Discovery shareholders sent a clear message to David Zaslav last month: Greed isn\u2019t good.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOn April 23, they approved a plan to sell the company to Paramount for $110.9 billion, while overwhelmingly rejecting the windfall Zaslav is set to receive when the deal closes \u2014 as much as $886 million, according to Warners, though his actual payout will likely be less than that. In the nonbinding vote, owners holding 82% of shares opposed Zaslav\u2019s golden parachute, which gives the Warner Bros. Discovery chief $552 million in stock, cash and benefits, as well as up to $335.4 million in reimbursement to take care of the tax bill on his lavish payday (an amount the company says will decline to zero by the end of 2026). The move may have been largely symbolic, but analysts believe that it signals growing distaste for the outsize rewards chief executives in the media and technology space receive for their work.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt makes a difference,\u201d says Rosanna Landis Weaver, a consultant at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. \u201cWhen a vote gets this high, boards of directors reasonably fear their reputations and start to take their responsibility to be impartial watchdogs more seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Zaslav, who has one foot out the door, didn\u2019t seem to get the message. A week later, Warner Bros. Discovery revealed that his pay package for 2025 had tripled to a staggering $165 million, making him one of the highest-paid CEOs in the world. In contrast, Tim Cook, the chief of Apple, which has a market cap of nearly $4 trillion compared with Warner Bros. Discovery\u2019s $67.8 billion, had to settle for a compensation package worth $74.3 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tZaslav wasn\u2019t the only chief executive enjoying a big raise. Overall, payouts to the heads of America\u2019s biggest corporations accelerated in 2025, mostly in the form of stock and options awards. For 318 companies in the S&P 500 last year, the median CEO compensation package was $17.7 million \u2014 an increase of 10.6% year over year, versus a 7.5% bump in 2025, according to an analysis by ISS-Corporate, a corporate-governance analytics provider. Those 2025 pay hikes didn\u2019t always align with the companies\u2019 performance, outpacing the median 7.5% one-year increase in total shareholder returns for the companies analyzed.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd Zaslav and his fellow entertainment moguls are earning bank as Hollywood is facing threats on all sides. The box office was flat last year, and attendance and ticket sales haven\u2019t come close to pre-pandemic levels. At the same time, customers are cutting the cable cord, prompting media companies to invest more heavily in streaming. The problem is, the money they make running a Peacock or Disney+, or the revenue they generate from licensing content to Netflix or Prime Video, pales in comparison with what they once pulled in from cable. The people running these media conglomerates often turn to the same playbook \u2014 layoffs. Over the past few months, Disney, Amazon, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery and Universal have slashed thousands of jobs as they look to cut costs. So why hasn\u2019t that spirit of belt-tightening extended to the C-suite?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe answer may lie in the way that many media companies are structured. Comcast, Fox and Paramount all have what\u2019s known as dual-class stock, which gives the families that control them nearly unchecked authority to determine how their top executives get financially rewarded. It establishes a dangerous precedent, because other companies in the sector that aren\u2019t family owned, such as Disney, put their dual-class competitors in their peer group when they sit down to figure out their leaders\u2019 paydays.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThese compensation packages will continue to accelerate as long as these dual-class companies are establishing the rules of the road,\u201d says Charles Elson of the University of Delaware\u2019s John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. \u201cIt creates upward pressure on the whole system, and every media company CEO is going to feel like they can\u2019t fall behind the rest of
the pack.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut that competitive pressure doesn\u2019t translate to a spirit of shared sacrifice. Instead, the compensation committees of major media companies use both qualitative and quantitative metrics for determining whether or not to reward these corporate leaders their multimillion-dollar bonuses. So even if a CEO doesn\u2019t reach certain financial goals, they are rewarded for their television division\u2019s Emmy wins, the box office performance of a blockbuster film or the opening of a theme park attraction, regardless of how directly involved they were in those successes. That typically means that even if the companies they run have a rough year, a CEO\u2019s pay stubs won\u2019t suffer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe logic is wrong,\u201d Elson says. \u201cMost of these CEOs didn\u2019t start the companies they lead, but you\u2019re giving them an entrepreneurial return for managerial risk. If an entrepreneur screws up, they go broke. If a media CEO doesn\u2019t do a good job, they walk away with a great salary and a lot of stock options.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n