A survey on executive compensation in US media, from Barclays Research, highlighted the following key points:

1. Average executive compensation is in general uncorrelated with publicly traded market capitalization, and has a relatively weak correlation with compensation metrics.


2. Incentive metrics are relatively consistent across the group of US media companies evaluated. Metrics based around Ebitda or operating income, cash flow and EPS (earnings per share) are the most commonly used. Most companies use EPS for compensation.


3. Discovery Communications Inc’s total CEO pay is more skewed towards stock and option-based compensation relative to its peer group, while Time Warner CEO pay is the most skewed towards cash.


4. Change-of-control payouts in the case of CBS and Discovery are the highest across the space, while Viacom and Fox do not appear to have change-of-control payouts for senior executives.


5. Among its peers, Fox has a unique executive compensation structure.