Last week, Hoda Kotb rather suddenly announced her retirement from NBC’s Today Show. While Hoda had been part of the Today team for decades, she didn’t become the primary co-anchor until 2017, when Matt Lauer was shoved out due to all of the rape and predatory misconduct. Hoda’s reasons for leaving were, by her own account, her recent 60th birthday and wanting to be around more for her young children. I genuinely hoped that these were the real reasons and that sexism or ageism (or both) were not at play. Well, some news. Puck reports that Hoda chose to retire rather than take a pay cut.
Hoda Kotb had decided to step down in August, she said, upon turning 60. She had reached “the top of the wave” and decided it was time to give her children “a bigger piece of my time pie.” Of course, all that is indisputably true. Hoda is going out on top—indeed, thanks to the Olympics, Today just beat Good Morning America in the quarter for the first time since she began hosting in 2018—and 60 is a reasonable time to start pivoting toward the true joys of life. Indeed, I’m reliably told that Hoda had entertained the idea of leaving NBC on the occasion of her 50th birthday, too.
Nevertheless, the choreography of Hoda’s exit also belied some unpalatable economic realities that the smoothie-sipping audience didn’t really need to hear about. Hoda was making more than $20 million per year at NBC, according to sources with direct knowledge of her salary. (Savannah also makes more than $20 million; Lauer had made $25 million.) NBC executives loved Hoda and knew her value to the brand, but also made clear to her agents that such stratospheric contracts were no longer justifiable given the industry’s inexorable decline. A decade ago, Today and GMA each averaged around 5 million viewers; today, their audiences are just more than half of that, at around 2.8 million. And they’ve fared even worse in the advertiser-coveted 25- to 54-year-old demo, declining from around 2 million viewers each to about 600,000. Thus, instead of a pay raise, NBC proposed a cut.
Alas, Hoda’s situation is not unique. An economic realignment is coming to television, and the star system is nearing its end. Inevitably, almost every handsomely paid on-air talent will be forced to take a haircut or, at best, accept an almost negligible 2 to 4 percent cost-of-living raise. Alternatively, they’ll be asked to graciously make way for significantly lower-priced successors “This is the age of the great resetting of TV news contracts,” one veteran media executive told me. “Everyone is getting their pay cut or their jobs eliminated. In the coming year, some big names will announce they want to spend more time with their kids or families or write new chapters. And that may be true. But they also don’t want to work for less money even though they have already made a fortune.”
After all, the current economic arrangement is entirely unsustainable. GMA co-hosts George Stephanopoulos, Robin Roberts, and Michael Strahan cost Disney at least $75 million a year, a ludicrous expense that will need to be greatly reduced during the next round of contract negotiations. Both Stephanopoulos and Roberts are 63, and may determine they don’t want to be paid less to wake up before 4 a.m. to service a shrinking audience. Strahan already moonlights as a Fox NFL analyst, which would be a fine safety net. Yes, the era keeps ending, but it’s starting to end a little faster.
I was well into my 20s before I realized the excessive salaries of network broadcast anchors, and it’s honestly still shocking to me. With Today, that’s NBC News’ signature program, that’s what makes the news division almost all of its money. Even with declining ratings and a lack of appeal to the younger demos, Today is still a big deal. But yeah, it will be interesting to see if, post-election especially, there’s a sudden changing of the media guard to younger and less expensive anchors. ABC’s David Muir will probably still hang around (I bet he brings in all kinds of good demos), but I could see George Stephanopoulos getting put out to pasture. Possibly Lestor Holt too? If none of this comes to pass and NBC was only asking Hoda (and no one else) to take a pay cut… well…
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.