Those Affluent Anchors

Local newsreaders enjoy soaring pay but often short careers

Walter Cronkite, eat your heart out.

The job of network anchor may, after years of struggle, bring nationwide fame and fortune. But there are now literally hundreds of men and women who, sometimes with the flimsiest of credentials, are making big names and big money anchoring local news programs. That ostensibly undemanding vocation is fast becoming the most financially rewarding job in journalism.

Dozens of local anchors are making more than $100,000 a year, and at least 16 make $200,000 or more (see box). Of course, stratospheric salaries were common at the networks even before Barbara Walters signed her million-dollar contract with ABC two years ago. What is new is that the pearly-toothed, cleft-chinned basso profundos who tell the way it was in your home town are starting to earn network-size salaries. "Only three or four years ago it was significant if an anchor earned $100,000," says Richard Leibner, one of a growing number of talent agents who serve local newscasters. "That has moved up considerably."

The demand for anchors spurted as local stations across the U.S. expanded their news coverage; Los Angeles' KNXT last month introduced a 2 1/2-hour newscast, and a number of stations (Los Angeles' KNBC, Chicago's WBBM and New York's WNBC among them) mount three shows a night. Local news operations, once money-losing public service efforts, have become universally profitable; at many stations news is the most important source of income. Now anchors and their agents routinely play one station against another at contract-renewal time, and the stations pay up willingly.

Why not? Television executives believe that the easiest way to win evening-news ratings points is to find, and keep, an anchor with that certain something --looks, sex appeal, credibility--that viewers like. A single ratings point in a major market like New York, Los Angeles or Chicago is worth more than $500,000 in yearly station revenues. When executives at Chicago's CBS-owned WBBM this year figured they would lose three evening-news ratings points if Anchor Bill Kurtis jumped to NBC-owned WMAQ, they won him back by counteroffering $250,000 a year. They considered it a bargain. Says Joe Saltzman, a veteran TV newsman who teaches broadcasting at the University of Southern California: "The anchor person presents the news the way people like to hear it. He's worth every penny he gets for that."

Some TV journalists wonder. One major complaint is that the more money anchors make, the less is left over for news coverage, a charge that station executives deny. "An individual's salary is a pittance in our budget," says News Director Norman Fein of New York's WNBC, which spends $13.5 million a year on news coverage. Yet disgruntled off-camera journalists at Los Angeles' KNBC figure that the salaries of the "talent," as on-camera personalities are known in the trade, account for nearly one-quarter of the station's $9.5 million news budget.

In a market where top anchors earn around $200,000, a reporter earns considerably less--$30,000 is typical--and off-camera writers and producers often make even less. A survey of 900 broadcast stations by Vernon Stone of Southern Illinois University this year indicated that the average salary for a TV news director was only $18,200. Such disparities offend those who believe salaries should more closely reflect journalistic experience. "Are anchors worth these astronomical amounts?" asks Chicago Sun-Times TV Critic Frank Swertlow. "Of course not. As journalists they can't hack it. These are made-for-television journalists."

That is not invariably the case. It is true that some anchors do little more than read scripts they did not write about news they did not select, and some are Ted Baxter types distinguished by appearance more than ability. Handsome, blow-dried Ron Hunter, for instance, is resigning from Chicago's WMAQ this month in the face of stagnant ratings and intense vilification by the city's acerbic TV critics. "He couldn't cover his nose, much less a fire," sniffs the Sun-Times's Swertlow. Yet many of the six-figure anchors, probably a majority, have had years of experience as reporters and still dash out of the studio like Dalmatians when a big story breaks. Washington's David Schoumacher put in two decades as a newspaper reporter and network correspondent before joining Washington's WJLA as anchor last year (at $120,000), and WBBM's Walter Jacobson ($140,000) is one of Chicago's most respected political reporters. Says New York's Larry Kane, a radio reporter at 15: "The press is abusive to say we're all mannequins. There are no major anchormen in the U.S. who are phonies."

Phonies or not, many anchors lead professional lives that are nasty, brutish and short. Maury Povich left Washington's WTTG 18 months ago for a $70,000 anchor spot at WMAQ in Chicago, quit after a year over a salary dispute, signed on with Los Angeles' KNXT for $150,000, was fired six months later during a ratings slump, and is now looking for work. "They put their guts on the line every day, and they know that if the ratings fall they could be gone just like that," says WBBM Station Manager David Nelson, snapping his fingers. Muses Schoumacher about his career: "It's nice now, but how long will it last? I'm glad I'll always know how to type."

The future of the anchor profession itself is not assured. Station managers and news directors will be watching closely this week when ABC News introduces its new network evening-news format, which will replace two New York-based anchors with four regional supercorrespondents. More and more stations are buying electronic gear, like minicams, that makes it easier to cover breaking news "live," a move that some TV journalists say will diminish the anchor role.

Until that day, however, the cost of anchors will probably soar even higher, if only because both anchors and their bosses know that stations can afford it. "Obviously there's a limit to what we can pay, but we haven't hit that limit yet," admits WNBC's Fein. WABC's Roger Grimsby may reach $300,000 when his new contract is signed this year, and Station Manager Nelson of WBBM predicts that salaries of top anchors will hit $500,000 within the next five years. Says one KNBC newsman: "Remember when you were a kid and the teacher told you not to read with your lips? Well, you shouldn't have listened."

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