KEY POINTS

  • Roberts said that $500 million had been raised to support employees
  • Disney Chairman Bob Iger foregoes salary, CEO Bob Chapek takes a 50% cut
  • Cinemark CEO Mark Zoradi has also chosen to forego his salary

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts joined other top execs in giving their salaries over to help employees and others whose incomes are affected by the lockdown. He will be donating his entire paycheck to various charities doing relief work.

Roberts, according to CBR, is only one of many Comcast higher-ups who will be donating full paychecks to these charities. Roberts made the announcement through a staff memo issued Wednesday.

In the memo, Roberts said that $500 million had been made available to support employees through “continued pay and benefits” as operations had been paused or were impacted by the quarantine. He also revealed that he, along with Mike Cavanagh (CFO), Dave Watson (Cable CEO/Senior Exec VP), Jeff Shell (NBC Universal) and Jeremy Darroch (Sky) had chosen to go along and donate their paychecks.

Shell revealed last week that he had tested positive for the coronavirus, making him the first high-level personality in entertainment media to contract it.

Roberts isn’t the only high-level media personality to surrender his salary to relief efforts. Forbes reported that Disney's Bob Iger, the highest-paid exec in the entertainment industry, is also forgoing his salary. Disney CEO Bob Chapek has also said he will take a 50% pay cut to help the mitigate the company's coronavirus woes.

Iger has also donated $500,000 to the city of Los Angeles to help in their COVID-19 efforts. The breakdown in the company is as follows: VPs will take a 20% reduction, while Senior VPs and executive VPs get their salaries slashed by 25% and 30%, respectively.

Aside from Bob Iger, Cinemark CEO Mark Zoradi has also chosen to forego his salary. Since the quarantine, companies have been laying people off or enforcing pay cuts. In Disney’s case, a $13 million loss per day has started ever since it announced on March 27 that most of its theme parks would remain closed until further notice, or until the COVID-19 outbreak is over.

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The Comcast NBC logo is shown on a building in Los Angeles, California, June 13, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake