Media Mogul Paydays: How the Biggest CEOs in Hollywood Made Bank in 2021

variety.com:

David Zaslav and Endeavor’s Ari Emanuel scored nine-figure compensation packages, a Day-Glo illustration of the lengths that board rooms go to reward the men (and it is exclusively men) at the top.

Those gaudy figures came largely in the form of stock options, which means the take-home pay could shrink if the market takes a nosedive, but both men are still among the most richly remunerated in this or any industry.

And they’re not alone: Disney’s Bob Iger ($45.9 million), Netflix’s Reed Hastings ($40.8 million) and Fox’s Rupert Murdoch ($31.1 million) all enjoyed big paydays, even though shareholders and critics have grown more vocal about their concerns that these business leaders are being too generously compensated. “Entertainment companies have some of the worst compensation practices for their executives of any industry,” says Rosanna Landis Weaver, program manager of the CEO pay program at shareholder advocacy group As You Sow. “They need to be reformed.”There are structural problems that make such an overhaul unlikely.

Many of these companies, such as Discovery, Comcast and ViacomCBS (recently rechristened Paramount Global) have dual-class stock, giving the controlling shareholders nearly absolute authority to determine how the business is run.