Executive compensation in pubmedia: what station and organization leaders are earning

Our latest study of executive compensation in public media includes the annual earnings of leaders representing 87 public media stations and major organizations. We included stations that receive CPB support and whose broadcast signals serve the top 25 TV and radio markets. Seven regional and national organizations are also represented.

We gathered the data from a variety of sources, including publicly available IRS 990 forms, databases, press reports, station websites and the leaders or organizations themselves. Depending on the source, the most recent data available runs from 2019 to 2023. We were unable to gather data for leaders of seven stations licensed to private universities. Their institutions’ 990 forms did not include their salaries, and they either declined to share their information or did not respond to requests.

Some of the executives identified in the most recent information available no longer work at the stations indicated. We did not include executives who worked only part of the most recent year available or who were serving in an interim role. 

Salaries of station leaders in the top 25 markets

Salaries of leaders of national organizations

Analysis: a boost for female leaders, and other findings

We broke down median salaries by license type and gender and also compared 2015 and 2023 median salaries among station types (radio, TV or joint licensee).

University stations represented in our study are licensed to public institutions. Only two stations in our sample — South Carolina ETV and Georgia Public Broadcasting — are state licensees. (Read more about why salaries at university licensees are lagging behind those at other organizations.)

When we last reviewed executive compensation in 2015, the median salary among female executives was 77% of the median salary among male leaders. This time, the median salary for women exceeds that of men.

And our analysis found that while median salaries for leaders of TV stations and joint licensees rose since our 2015 survey, the median salary for radio executives stayed nearly flat.

Article, table and charts by Digital Editor Mike Janssen. Salary data gathered by Mike Janssen and reporters Tyler Falk and Julian Wyllie.

Correction: A version of the salary data that appeared in Current’s May 15 print edition included incorrect information for WHYY and its CEO, Bill Marrazzo. The station’s expenses in FY2020 were $37,584,084, according to its 990. With that change, Marrazzo’s salary was 1.8% of station expenses that year. The data on this page has been updated with the station’s FY21 990.

A previous version of the salary data above included an incorrect figure for the total expenses of American Public Media Group. The data has been updated.