Le$ Moonve$

The CEO of CBS might just be the richest executive in media, and now he has a few more years to pour wheelbarrows full of money into his forty car garage with elevators. From Tom Taylor's NOW column...

CBS keeps Chairman/CEO Les Moonves around until at least June 2021. Just as with Bob Iger over at Disney, the board sees a strong and experienced executive – and nobody on the scene who might succeed him. (Disney’s board essentially told Iger’s #2 Tom Staggs that he wouldn’t automatically be anointed when Iger retires.) At CBS, Moonves’ annual salary of $3.5 million remains unchanged but it’s the other stuff – stock awards, options – that levitated his 2016 total compensation to $69.6 million. After Moonves finally does depart, he’ll have five years as a “senior advisor,” and CBS would support him in starting his own production company. Most CBS Radio folks probably aren’t thinking much of Moonves or his #2, Joe Ianniello. They’re too busy trying to figure out their future under Entercom, once that merger closes later this year. (CBS Radio just parted company with a top-ten market programmer, as you’ll read in today’s “Transitions.”)