The Heavyweights Of Business News Earn Top Dollars, Says Trade Journal
The Heavyweights Of Business News Earn Top Dollars, Says Trade Journal
SOME big names in business journalism earn big bucks -- and the top few may earn as much as the chief executives they report on, according to a trade journal. Louis Rukeyser, Marshall Loeb, and Lou Dobbs led the list, each earning more than $1 million in 1994, according to TJFR Business News Reporter, based in Ridgewood, N.J.
Mr. Rukeyser hosts public television's ''Wall Street Week.'' Mr. Loeb is a former managing editor of Fortune. He now is editor at large of the twice-monthly glossy business magazine. Mr. Dobbs is the lead anchor of CNN's business news operation.
The top 20 earners in financial reporting together made more than $10 million last year, the newsletter reported in its March 13 issue. The journal cautioned that determining journalists' pay is imprecise and that none of the journalists it ranked would comment on their compensation.
Phone company clears last hurdle to video services
BELL ATLANTIC CORPORATION cleared a crucial regulatory hurdle in its plans to become a cable television provider.
The Philadelphia-based company said March 17 it received a waiver from a consent decree that broke up AT&T in 1984 that will allow it to transmit video and other signals across local telephone boundaries. Under the decree, signals that cross local calling boundaries are considered a long-distance service, something Bell Atlantic and six other regional Bell companies are barred from offering.
The development is important because it will permit Bell Atlantic to efficiently and cost effectively send and receive video and other signals nationwide by satellite, as cable TV companies routinely do.
Bell Atlantic is building a cable-television facility in Dover, N.J., to serve 38,000 people. It plans to build video networks in major cities throughout its five-state telephone territory. Those plans, contested by the cable industry, must be approved by the Federal Communications Commission.
WABC radio sues Yankees
WABC radio sued the New York Yankees for $10 million, charging that the baseball club has caused the station to lose millions of advertising dollars by offering ''sham competitions'' for broadcast during the baseball players strike.
WABC said it paid millions to air games using genuine major-leaguers, but the Yankees breached their contract with the station by offering games using unknown replacement players. The replacement games are worthless to WABC, the station said in the suit filed March 17, ''because virtually no advertisers'' will buy time on broadcasts of the games.
Advertisers in some other major-league baseball towns are showing little enthusiasm for broadcasts of games with replacement players, station and cable network managers say. Ad commitments at TV stations that carry Boston Red Sox and Kansas City Royals games are running 65 percent behind a year ago, they said.
Howard Rubenstein, spokesman for the Yankees, said the team is confident of its position under the contract. Don Bouloukos, vice president and general manager of WABC radio, said the station plans to continue to broadcast Yankee games.
