It is reported that the Village Voice has laid off three staff writers and reduced a senior editor to part-time status. And there are also reports of about 20 layoffs at NBC’s Tonight show:
Leno is paid approximately $30 million. He last reupped his contract in 2010 after reclaiming the Tonight Show from Conan O’Brien. The show currently employs between 150 and 200 people, according to a network source. . . .
Meanwhile, the program’s weekly budget will be cut from $2.3 million — the amount allotted for Leno’s primetime show that carried over when he took the Tonight reigns from O’Brien — to around $1.7 million, back near where it was during the host’s first late-night run, the Los Angeles Times reports. The paper notes that Leno is taking a sizable pay cut in the process.
I’m sure Mitt Romney will be blamed for this, somehow.
Nah, it’s still Bush’t fault.
My first thought was: it costs over $2M to put on the Tonight Show? I guess the network asked themselves the same question.
As it was during Carson’s tenure, The Tonight Show is still NBC’s most dependable cash cow. Many of the insiders blame the new suits at corporate from the Comcast merger who are determined to cut costs across the board.
Hey Comcast, why not zero out the news division? It isn’t as if they report any actual news!
Legal Insurrection noted this too and had a pretty good post on it. Worth a link around between you guys.
You mean he’ll only get paid $25 million?
I don’t understand how he’ll be able to sustain himself.
$30 mill to sit and make jokes about conservatives? Hey, I can do that. And I’ll do it for only a million.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/08/the-village-voice-is-dead-long-live-nat-hentoff/
Leno’s only doing it to try to outlast Letterman – Carson’s record is untouchable, but he wants 2nd place. NBC has far more affiliates than CBS, so he has the reach and the tradition.
He’s kicking in a few million a year, so that’s pretty significant. Letterman didn’t even buy nice gifts for the interns who put out for him.
Beat me to it.
Entertainers and news agencies should hire someone to do the math for them. Lopping off half of your potential audience over politics is stoopid. Leno plays it soft, but the leftism bleeds through anyway. It’s nearly impossible to watch or read anything these days because of that factor, and I’m a pretty tolerant SOB, having hung out with musicians my whole life.