Jay Leno has extended his deal with NBC for two more years thru May 2014. “The Tonight Show” host decided to take a 50% pay cut in order to reduce the show’s budget.
Leno now receives around $15 million per year, slashing the show’s $100 million annual budget by about 20%.
The budget cuts were aimed at reversing tens of millions of dollars in budget increases implemented when Leno’s show was briefly moved to primetime in 2009. When the show returned to 11.35 P.M., the larger budget remained.
“All we did was bring it back down to pre-prime-time levels,” NBC’s entertainment chief Robert Greenblatt said, “I went to his office and we sat down and I said, ‘We have to be smart about how we do this show. We are in a difficult place at the network’… He understood.”
“The Tonight Show” budget was reduced from $2.3 million to $1.7 million weekly, affecting around ten percent of the 200 staffers. Leno agreed to take the pay cut to save his coworkers jobs.
