Wendy Williams hosts the popular TV talk show The Wendy Williams Show since 2008. She is known for her outspoken personality that has gotten her into several bouts with guests. Even way before her career on television, when she was a radio DJ, and host, her on-air feuds with celebrities have already made her a household name that she was made a subject of the reality TV series The Wendy Williams Experience.
Williams is also quite the businesswoman with her creations of product lines including a wig line, a jewelry collection, and a fashion line. She also has a New York Times best-selling autobiography and six other books. She was also inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2009. She even has a street renamed after her.
Brian Williams – $10m
Brian Williams spent a decade of his career as an anchor on NBC Nightly News. In 1993, he joined the national Weekend Nightly News and was the chief White House correspondent. A few years later, he was the managing editor and anchor of The News with Brian Williams on MSNBC and CNBC. He then replaced Tom Brokaw on NBC Nightly News in 2004. Right after joining the program, NBC News was awarded a Peabody Award, the George Polk Award, and the DuPont- Columbia University award for the Hurricane Katrina coverage.
In 2015, he was suspended for six months and demoted from the Nightly News because he apparently “misrepresented” events when he was covering the Iraq War in 2003. Williams moved to MSNBC and is now the chief anchor as well as the host of their nightly program The 11th Hour with Brian Williams.
Rachel Maddow – $7m
Gradually becoming one of the most trusted reporters on TV today, Rachel Maddow worked her way to earn that trust. She is the first openly lesbian anchor to host a primetime news program in the United States. Maddow graduated with a degree in public policy at Stanford in 1994 and has a doctorate in politics from the University of Oxford.
She had her first radio hosting job at WRNX in 1999 while she was first seen on TV as a regular panelist on the MSNBC show Tucker. The liberal political commentator later became an MSNBC political analyst and was a regular panelist on Race for the White House. The first time she hosted a program was when she substituted for Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Eventually, she got her own nightly show The Rachel Maddow Show. Together with Brian Williams, Maddow is also the network’s special event co-anchor.
Megyn Kelly – $15m
Megyn Kelly is a former corporate defense attorney, and one of her first few jobs was a general assignment reporter where she conducted live coverage of the confirmation hearing for U.S. Supreme Court Justices. When she joined Fox News, she hosted her own legal segment called Kelly’s Court during Weekend Live as well as appearing on a weekly segment on The O’Reilly Factor. In 2010, she hosted America Live.
From 2013 to 2017, Kelly hosted the nightly program The Kelly File which at times, overtook the network’s regular number one The O’Reilly Factor in ratings. Kelly has been listed as one of the 100 most influential people on Time. Eventually, she left Fox News in 2017 and joined NBC News and hosted the third hour of the morning show Today with her program Megyn Kelly Today. However, her contract with NBC was terminated in January 2019.
Ainsley Earhardt – $400k
Ainsley Earnhardt began her career in journalism before she graduated from USC when she was hired to work as a reporter for WLTX-News 19, the local CBS Station in Columbia, South Carolina. She worked as the morning and noon anchor from 2000 to 2004. In 2007, she moved to New York and was hired by Fox News Channel. She has co-hosted a few programs including America’s New’s Headquarters, Fox and Friends Weekend, and Fox’s All-American New Year’s Eve as well as being a panelist on The Live Desk.
Today, she appears on Hannity with her own segment called Ainsley Across America. Earnhardt is an author of two children’s books namely Through Your Eyes and Take My Heart, and a memoir entitled The Light Within Me.