Cash & Carey: News Corp's $40M Man?

The two Big Media companies with the worst reputations for both underpaying its employees and pennypinching everyone else are the Walt Disney Co and News Corp. So it continually outrages me how both these corporations overpay their top two bosses. Disney CEO Bob Iger ranks #3 among the 10 highest-paid CEOs for 2008 at Standard & Poor's 500 companies, earning $51.1M. (And let's not forget his "Golden Coffin".) Now News Corp's filings with the SEC show it's throwing money at its new Vice Chairman, President and COO Chase Carey just like it did President/COO Peter Chernin. Carey will receive a salary of $8.1M a year, which nearly quadruples the base pay he received as CEO of DirecTV. He also received a baseball-like $10M cash signing bonus and use of the corporate or a chartered jet for business and pleasure. Plus, he's eligible for an annual performance-based bonus of as much as $25 million. Oh, and did I mention that News Corp stock has declined 38% in the past year? By contrast, DirecTV paid Carey a base salary of $2.3M last year and his total compensation including stock options was $13M. Meanwhile PaidContent.org says Slingbox co-founder Blake Krikorian is up for the DirecTV job.