Here S Why Hoda Kotb Isn T Making Matt Lauer Money

Why would that be? For one, there’s the gender pay gap, a serious problem with tentacles that stretch into practically every industry, most obviously in places like TV news where the contracts of on-air personalities are subject to plenty of public scrutiny and gossip. But Variety points out that there’s another factor at play, a long-held TV tradition of paying newcomers to high-profile jobs significantly less than their highly paid predecessors. In fact, one particular exception to that method of doing things can be found in the case of a woman on NBC: Megyn Kelly. In her case, she was being courted by several networks attempting to lure her away from the well-paying Fox News, so her reported $17 million from NBC was engineered with that in mind. For Kotb’s part, her $7 million may be roughly equivalent to what co-anchor Savannah Guthrie is making, but she’ll have to stay on the job (and keep Today’s ratings at their currently high levels) for a while if she wants to come even close to what Lauer’s paychecks used to be.