Executive Pay 2021: COVID Hammered Hollywood’s Bottom Line
Now that we’re in 2021, we are able to see simply how their pockets had been affected, or not. In a phrase, CEOs had been all nonetheless greater than handsomely compensated for his or her work final 12 months. For most, the pay cuts solely meant they weren’t taking their salaries, which is a small fraction of their full compensation packages, largely made up of inventory and possibility awards, in addition to bonuses.
While it’s true that the highest executives over at Fox, Comcast and Disney did make much less cash in comparison with 2019, others truly noticed their pay enhance regardless of decrease wage. AMC’s Adam Aron and Cinemark’s Mark Zoradi every noticed their complete compensation soar in 2020 — which doesn’t look nice when you think about that 2020 was a brutal 12 months for the movie show trade, taking billions in losses. Aron was gifted with a $3.75 million bonus for “extraordinary efforts” for steering the chain by way of the pandemic (this got here on the identical time AMC stated it took a $1 billion loss over the last three months of 2020.
Zoradi’s inventory awards practically doubled throughout 2020, which greater than made up for his wage being lower from $1 million to $740,000.
Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen noticed his compensation go up 40-fold, from $2.36 million in 2019 to $94.7 million. The huge rise was resulting from an possibility award price a whopping $91.9 million. If you are taking that out, his pay would nonetheless have been an 18.6% enchancment from 2019, with $2.eight million.
Below is TheWrap‘s list of executive compensation details from 2020 corporate SEC filings. To compare it to past years, click through our previous annual reports. (You’re welcome):
We shall be updating this story as extra main media firms report the take-home pay of their prime executives.
Bob Bakish is among the many media execs who made more cash in 2020 than he did in 2019. If we’re being truthful, with the long-promised rebranding of CBS All Access to Paramount+, he didn’t mail it in from his eating room desk. Then once more, 2019 wasn’t precisely a put-your-feet-up 12 months for Bakish both, as that’s when Viacom and CBS had been re-merged.
Last 12 months, Bakish made a base wage of $3.1 million, a rise of six p.c. The bulk of his compensation got here from inventory awards ($16 million) and non-equity incentive plan compensation ($19.6 million). It helped that ViacomCBS was not among the many firms to institute pay cuts final 12 months.
Bakish and Netflix’s two CEOs (extra on them beneath) had been among the many prime 10 highest-paid CEOs for any enterprise in 2020.
Our excuse for Bakish’s pay enhance didn’t fairly translate to David Zaslav, who equipped endlessly for the January 2021 launch of the Discovery+ streaming service. Zaslav’s choices awards modified from $7 million in 2019 to nada in 2020. His pay dropped by practically 18 p.c.
But don’t really feel too badly for the staunch defender of the cable bundle (weirdly, a bit much less so since launching Discovery+), because the dude banked an insane $129.four million in 2018, due to an infinite enhance in Zaslav’s choices award of virtually $90 million that 12 months.
Cinemark CEO Mark Zoradi made $600,000 extra in 2020 than in 2019, which feels a bit of odd as a result of his theaters certain didn’t.
Due to a pandemic-instituted pay lower, Zoradi’s base wage decreased from $1 million to $740,000 and his non-equity incentive plan compensation went to zero. But his inventory awards rose from $3.1 million in 2019 to $5.eight million in 2020, a 12 months wherein Cinemark inventory did something however rise, falling 36% over the course of the 12 months (at one level it was down 74%).
That didn’t elevate a complete bunch of crimson flags throughout the trade, nonetheless, as a result of…
AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron’s dramatic 115% enhance in compensation final 12 months is evident within the pandemic 12 months. After all, AMC is the No. 1 theater chain within the U.S., and what enterprise was rocked tougher…
