CBS’s O’Donnell Barely Hanging on After Salary Gets Slashed 53 Percent

For a while now, there’s been rumors that CBS News would show CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell the door as her third-place newscast continues to skid. They also signed a new contract several months ago. Those rumors appeared to have been a failure. According to however, New York PostExclusive citing Insiders: The network attempted to make her quit by reducing her salary more than half. She called their bluff, accepted, and then she was fired.

In the report, the paper notes that her salary was slashed from $8 million a year to $3.8 million and O’Donnell’s acceptance of the cut came as a complete surprise to executives who are looking for her replacement:

According to insiders, CBS News re-signed the 48-year-old anchor in April with a yearly salary of $3.8 million — down from the previous $8 million — following reports that the network had been casting around for a replacement as O’Donnell’s ratings continue to sag.

CBS execs gave O’Donnell a “low ball” offer during the hard-knuckle negotiations, which they “expected O’Donnell to reject,” according to a source briefed on the talks. The source said that some executives were surprised when she accepted the offer.

This salary lowballing came amid rumors that O’Donnell was under fire internally for “toxic behavior.” This came from another Post exclusive where insiders vented to the paper about how she doesn’t do the hard work other anchors do, lacks confidence on screen, and acts like a diva.

This has reportedly led executives to approach talent outside the network like MSNBC’s lyin’ Brian Williams and NBC’s Craig Melvin to take over for O’Donnell. There’s also talk that they were looking at moving CBS MorningsTony Dokoupil is the co-host of the evening news with Tony Dokoupil.

There was also a suggestion that O’Donnell’s agents were shopping her to then-incoming CNN boss Chris Licht. The request for negotiation was declined because Licht wasn’t at CNN at the time, but a source close to him “was adamant that the exec would not want to ‘reunite’ with the ‘difficult’ anchor.”

The Post also reported that O’Donnell supposedly went over the head of CBS co-president Neeraj Khemlani “to negotiate her contract with CBS CEO George Cheeks and Shari Redstone, the chairwoman of CBS parent Paramount Global[.]”

To summarize, The PostA spokesperson for CBS attacked the newspaper:

“Wrong again. Neeraj led the effort to retain and re-sign about a dozen of our biggest anchors and correspondents over the last year including Norah O’Donnell and Gayle King — and recruited a few new ones like Nate Burleson and Robert Costa,” the spokesperson said.

“While there are huge prime time openings elsewhere in the News industry, CBS News has the No. The No.1 news broadcast and ended the season with several shows, mornings as well as evenings, in their strongest position yet. Apparently, the more false stories the NY Post writes, the better things go for CBS News.”

The spokesperson didn’t explain what she was talking about, as CBS has very little upward momentum and ranks third among broadcast networks. In fact, NewsBusters has caught lazy programming by O’Donnell where she recycled month-old segments without any substantive updates.

The paper went on to note that “the thinly veiled job search damaged O’Donnell’s reputation and infuriated her team” and a source lamented that Khemlani “has damaged Norah. It is unlikely that the show will improve beyond third place. CBS is not the same show it was before. It’s not even close.”