Television News Reporter Salary

Video Transcript

"The average salary for a TV news reporter varies a great deal, primarily based on market size and with that means is, there are a couple of hundred different market sizes in the US. For example, New York has the most people so New York is the number one market. A reporter in New York could make hundred of thousands of dollars a year. However, a news reporter in the middle of nowhere, for example Iowa, in the Country side somewhere. Some of those reporters make as little as thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars per year. The reason for that has a lot to do with how many people are watching, the more people that watch your station, the more revenue coming into the station because of what you'd charge for commercials and things like that and everyones salaries are based on that. Now, if only a few thousand people are watching your station, your salary could be very small but in New York, for example, where millions of people are watching your station is huge. So, the primary difference between making a reporters salary, out in the middle of nowhere, and the reporters salary in a big city, like even New York, or L.A., or Chicago, is primarily the population density. Those salaries can range anywhere from minimum wage all the way into the millions of dollars. Interns in TV news or TV news reporting, typically, don't get paid. Some internships, for some kinds of companies and that sort of thing and then some career fields do earn a salary, but interns in news usually don't and one reason for that is competition. Just imagine how many thousands of people every year of every semester even, from various colleges, graduate from a journalism program and many of them want to be TV news reporters. So, the competition is fierce and the number of jobs available is very small, consider how many people are in your local TV station. How many people are in the community and how few are actually on TV. So, because of that competition, the salaries can be rather low because everyone's fighting for that job so stations don't have to spend as much to get the people they want. Now, once you start in a very small market, that probably pays peanuts, you work your way up into bigger markets where the money's a lot better, once you've weeded out some of the chaff. So, once you get into the really big markets, the really good markets, the salaries are pretty good, up into the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollar range but you've got to start small and you've got to start with practically nothing."