This factoid makes one sit up straight. It reminds us that the traditional over-the-air TV networks have the wrong priorities, and that they are investing in the present, not the future. It underscores something else as well – the network TV business may be suffering, but it is still very profitable, indeed.

KATIE AND DIANE: THE WRONG QUESTIONS
While doing some recent research on the news business, I came upon this remarkable fact: Katie Couric’s annual salary is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined. Couric’s salary comes to an estimated $15 million a year; NPR spends $6 million a year on its morning show and $5 million on its afternoon one. NPR has seventeen foreign bureaus (which costs it another $9.4 million a year); CBS has twelve. Few figures, I think, better capture the absurd financial structure of the network news.

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