We keep hearing the MPAA and others talk about how much Hollywood is suffering from piracy and how they can't fund new movies and how they're having to lay people off. And then there's this, suggesting something else may be going on:

Consider: the top 20 companies in the United States ranked by market capitalization include no media companies. But according to figures assembled for The New York Times by Equilar, which compiles data on executive compensation, media companies employ seven of the top 20 highest paid chief executives.

The names are familiar and the numbers are large: Leslie Moonves of CBS ($60,253,647), David M. Zaslav of Discovery Communications ($49,932,867), Robert A. Iger of Walt Disney ($37,103,208), Philippe P. Dauman of Viacom ($33,396,104), Jeffrey L. Bewkes of Time Warner ($25,670,263), Brian L. Roberts of Comcast ($25,087,379), and Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation ($22,418,292).

Basically, the study showed that media companies might not be as big as companies in other industries, but they pay their execs way more. Basically, the top execs in the media business make much more than comparable execs in other industries, even if the companies those execs work for are doing much better:

The data indicates that average pay of the 10 highest paid chief executives for media companies was about $30 million, more than the captains of technology or finance and other industries, who average $6 million to $14 million less.

A few years ago, a friend who worked in the movie industry told me that the industry changed completely when the top executives started thinking that they were the stars. Suddenly, the focus shifted from making good entertainment to making sure they were the highest paid people around, and making sure that everyone knew it. I thought it was just a random comment at the time, but the data suggests that there's at least something to the idea that media execs have way outsized salaries.

Either way, though, it does seem somewhat ridiculous to see any of the folks on the list above complaining that their business is in trouble when they're pulling down salaries like that.

Like the four who held the job before him since its, er, difficulties began five-and-a-half years ago, Steve Freiberg did not do a particularly good job running E*Trade. But he’s been compensated handsomely for facing the wrath of an angry Ken Griffin before getting a pink slip in August.

E*Trade Financial Corp. said it paid its former Chief Executive Steven Freiberg $10.7 million in 2012, including a severance payment, according to a regulatory filing early Friday.

In its proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the online brokerage said Mr. Freiberg received $3 million in stock awards, $630,769 in salary and a $7 million lump sum cash severance payment.

E*Trade also said Mr. Freiberg collected a prorated bonus of $1.6 million paid in February and outstanding equity awards, which were valued at $3.3 million under an accelerated vesting schedule.

E*Trade also handed over $2.5 million to its chairman, Frank Petrilli, including $2.2 million for doing Freiberg’s old job during the waning days of 2012. And E*Trade wasn’t the only good place to be a former or soon-to-be-former CEO last year.

Marsh & McLennan Cos. gave outgoing chief executive Brian Duperreault a $17 million pay package last year, a 17% increase from 2011, according to the company’s annual proxy released Friday.

Mr. Duperreault’s compensation included a $1 million salary, stock and option awards of $10 million, and a $5 million bonus. It also included the personal use of the company’s corporate jet, valued at $441,875.

Mr. Duperreault, a longtime insurance executive who ran Marsh & McLennan for five years, stepped down at the end of 2012. The proxy said his pay increase was based in part on the company’s financial performance for the year, his work in positioning the company for future growth, and the “successful transition of CEO responsibilities” to Mr. Glaser.

Good Friday compensation disclosures were less kind to the poor schmucks who still have to run their companies. Charles Schwab CEO Walt Bettinger hasn’t gotten a raise in four years, and the IntercontinentalExchange gave CEO Jeffrey Sprecher a 15% pay cut for the year in which he bought the fucking New York Stock Exchange.

Mr. Sprecher, who has led ICE since its formation in 2000, in 2011 was the second-highest-paid exchange CEO after Duncan Niederauer, CEO of NYSE. Under terms of NYSE’s deal with ICE, Mr. Niederauer will become president of the combined company, while Mr. Sprecher will remain chairman and CEO.

Former E*Trade CEO Paid $10.7 Million in 2012 [WSJ]
Marsh & McLennan’s Outgoing CEO Got $17 Million [WSJ]
Schwab CEO Pay Stays Around $10.2 Million [WSJ]
InterncontinentalExchange Chief’s Pay Down 15% [WSJ]

Other posts from Dealbreaker:

• S&P Cries “Conspiracy!”
• Half Of Hedge Fund Employees Pretty Sure Their Competitors Are Up To No Good
• M&A Bankers Developing Serious Jealousy Of IPO Guys

Just a few days ago, in mocking the MPAA/RIAA filing with the US's IP Enforcement Coordinator, we noted that they mocked Kim Dotcom as being arrogant and wealthy, but ignored the fact that their own execs made a ton of money. We specifically called out RIAA boss Cary Sherman's 2009 salary. At the time, I realized it was odd that we hadn't seen any update on salaries, since they have to file these things publicly. Well, it turns out that the RIAA was just dragging its heels, and Torrentfreak highlighted the latest filing, noting mainly that the RIAA's budget is shrinking drastically, as members are paying less (in part due to massive consolidation from the major labels).

That said, it doesn't seem to have dampened the salaries the RIAA is paying its top execs. This report covers 2010, so it's out of date. Mitch Bainwol is still there and Cary Sherman is the number two guy, rather than top dog as he is now. Still, if being rich and arrogant is evidence of someone up to no good, the RIAA's top brass may have some explaining to do: It certainly looks like nearly all of the RIAA's top brass are either deeply embedded in the top 1% of earners or very close to the borderline (about $380k per year). Mitch Bainwol and Cary Sherman each made over $1 million. Neil Turkewitz, Mitch Glazier and Steve Marks all made over $600k. Considering how phenomenally unsuccessful the RIAA has been over the past decade, you'd think that its members could find cheaper execs to keep driving the organization into the ground. As TorrentFreak points out, membership dues dropped from $49.76 million in 2008 down to just $27.88 million in 2010. You'd think that money could be spent somewhat more effectively, rather than pining for a past where they were gatekeepers in control of the market.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who made approximately $23 million last year, apparently doesn't like the press picking on the salaries at big banks like his. So, he's telling them that they're the ones who are overpaid. To be fair, the context is that he's mocking reporters for focusing on the compensation ratio statistic that some have brought up in questioning how much banks pay their employees, by noting that the same ratio -- which he rightfully calls a "stupid ratio" -- doesn't necessarily look good for the newspaper industry either. Of course, most journalists just buzz right by that context and point out how ridiculous it looks for Dimon to complain about how much journalists make, coming from where he's sitting:

Dimon himself took home roughly $23 million in 2011, about the same as the year before, according to Bloomberg. Compare that to newspaper reporters, who earn an average salary of $43,780 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or between $20,000 and $60,000 per year according to Payscale.

For fun, let's just compare a bit more. The average reporter at The New York Times earns about $93,000 per year, according to Glassdoor.com. The New York Times Company reported an operating profit of $56.7 million in 2011.

Dimon's salary not only dwarfs that of us media-folk; he's also making millions more than most of his employees. The average JPMorgan employee made $341,552 last year, according to Bloomberg News.

The key point, here, is really that if you're trying to convince the press to stop focusing on stories about reasonable employee pay, you probably should not then directly state that their pay is "just damned outrageous," while then defending bank employee payments by saying, "We are going to pay competitively.... We need top talent, you cannot run this business on second-rate talent." The implication that the press gets from that -- perhaps on purpose -- is that the media shouldn't pay competitively, doesn't need top talent, and can run its business on second-rate talent. Some might argue that's already the case... but it's unlikely to get those "second-rate" reporters to drop the issue...

It's difficult to think of a more disastrous strategy pioneered for the recording industry than the one cooked up by RIAA bosses Mitch Bainwol and Cary Sherman. The two were the "masterminds" behind the plan to sue fans directly, which has been an uncontested disaster that did absolutely nothing to help the bottom line of the record labels. If anything, the evidence suggests that the lawsuit strategy has only galvanized folks to look for alternatives beyond spending money on RIAA labels. The RIAA finally dropped the lawsuit strategy, which was deemed a money pit by a recording industry exec and almost resulted in EMI leaving the RIAA. After all of that, the RIAA itself had massive layoffs.

Given all of that, you might think that Bainwol and Sherman should be looking for new jobs. Instead, apparently, they've been given hefty raises. P2Pnet notes that Bainwol in 2008 made over $2 million dollars -- an increase from the $1.485 million he made in 2007. Sherman made $1.332 million, noticeably more than the $985k he made a year earlier. While I don't have any issue with the absolute amounts, I do question why these guys are getting raises while presiding over what will clearly be looked back on as one of the biggest blunders by an industry in decades. On top of that, I can see how some might question how the RIAA can claim to represent "starving artists" when its execs are doing so well. Apparently, the answer to not being a starving artist is to go become boss of the RIAA.

It's beginning to appear that some of the major labels' strategy for dealing with the changing structure of the music business -- in which overall money is up, but has shifted away from the record labels' bank accounts -- is to simply bleed the old market dry. How else to explain that as Warner Music continued to shrink and fail to respond to market changes in any reasonable manner, its two top executives took home $14 million last year. I guess you could argue that WMG's stock was up slightly (from deathly ill to just really really sickly -- but way, way down from just a couple years ago) over the year, but the company lost a tremendous amount of money each quarter this year (last quarter still hasn't been reported), and Warner Music has shown little outward effort to suggest it's adapted or has any idea how to adapt to the changing market.