NEW YORK: They're not Hollywood stars, they're not TV personalities and they don't play in a rock band, but their pay packages are in the same league.
Six of the 10 highest-paid CEOs last year worked in the media industry, according to a study carried out by executive compensation data firm Equilar and the Associated Press.
The best-paid chief executive of a large American company was David Zaslav, head of Discovery Communications, the pay-TV channel operator that is home to Shark Week. His total compensation more than quadrupled to $156.1 million in 2014 after he extended his contract.
Les Moonves, of CBS, held on to second place in the rankings, despite a drop in pay from a year earlier. His pay package totaled $54.4 million.
The remaining four CEOs, from entertainment giants Viacom, Walt Disney, Comcast and Time Warner, have ranked among the nation's highest-paid executives for at least four years, according to the Equilar/AP pay study.
One reason for the high level of pay in the industry is that its CEOs are dealing with well-paid individuals.
"The talent, the actors and directors and writers, they're being paid a lot of money,'' said Steven Kaplan, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. "In industries where the talent makes a lot of money, the CEO makes a lot of money as well.''
Pay packages for CEOs overall grew for the fifth straight year in 2014, driven by a rising stock market that pushed up the value of executive stock awards. Median compensation for the heads of Standard & Poor's 500 companies rose to a record $10.6 million, up from $10.5 million the year before, according to the Equilar/AP pay study.
Peer pressure is another factor driving up executive compensation. The board members responsible for setting CEO pay typically consider what the heads of similar companies are making. If pay for one goes up, it will likely go up for others.
For the chieftains of media, there are also other factors boosting pay. Several work at companies where a few major shareholders control the vote.
Top executives are getting paid more because much of their compensation comes from bonuses linked to their company's financial and stock performance. Only a small part of their pay comes from their base salary.
Structuring pay this way is intended to align the executives' interests to that of the company and to encourage long-term strategies.
Because corporate earnings have grown consistently, with a near six-year expansion of the economy, executives have met or beaten their earnings targets generally.
Earnings-per-share for the average S&P 500 company rose 7.7% in 2014, according to data from S&P Capital IQ. Revenue-per-share climbed 4%.
"There should be a strong link between pay and performance. The markets were up in 2014 so it makes sense that (compensation) was going in the same direction,'' said Bess Joffe, managing director of corporate governance at TIAA-CREF, an asset management company. "We would also expect, in a downturn, for the compensation numbers to fall.''
The gap between pay for CEOs and that of the average worker narrowed slightly last year, because average wages crept up more than CEO pay did.
A chief executive made about 205 times the average worker's wage, compared with 257 times the year before, according to AP calculations using earnings statistics from the Labour Department.
That gap was still much wider than six years before, during the recession, when executives earned 181 times the average worker's pay.
For the annual CEO pay study, Equilar assessed data from 338 companies that filed proxy statements with regulators between Jan 1 and April 30, 2015. To calculate a CEO's pay package, Equilar and the AP looked at salary, stock and option awards, perks and bonuses.
The study only includes chief executives who have been at the helm of their company for at least two years. Because of these criteria, there are some notable omissions from the list.
Among other findings:
The industry with the biggest pay increase was basic materials, which includes oil, mining and chemical companies. Median pay at these companies rose by 15% last year. Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson was the highest paid, making $28.4 million last year.
Female CEOs again had a median pay package worth more than their male counterparts. Last year, women chief executives earned $15.9 million compared with the median salary for male CEOs of $10.4 million.
The number of female CEOs included in the study rose to 17 from 12 in the previous year. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was the highest paid, earning $42.1 million, which placed her fifth among CEOsin the survey.
Richard Hayne, the CEO and co-founder of Urban Outfitters, received the biggest pay bump. His compensation soared 682% to $535,636. Most of the increase came from his performance cash bonus, which jumped to $500,000 from $35,000 a year earlier.
Hayne returned to lead the company in 2012 after an absence of five years.