She makes that kind of money because the shows producers figure she is worth it, that the advertising the show gets more than pays for that. Shows go by the demographics of who watches the show, and for a morning program like that it is likely that she is getting some coveted group (what that is I don’t know, unless a lot of people watch it on Tivo, not sure who is watching at 9am). In any event, they think she brings in that kind of money.
It is the same with athletes, they get paid what the teams think they are worth. While there are a lot of players I have scratched my head and said what the heck to, there are also players who go out there and tear up the game, how much is it worth to bring fans into the stadium, people watching the games on TV? George Will in the Ken Burns “Baseball” said that he was going to sound like a Bolshevik, but that the players deserved the money, they were the ones people came to see, and why should all the money go to the owners, like it was before free agency?
I think there is a difference between what society values and what is truly valuable, and monetary awards don’t necessarily go to the latter. What is more valuable, an idiot member of the Kardashians, or the researcher who likely makes peanuts who figures out how to cure some form of cancer, or figures out the nature of matter? Is the teacher who gets kids to think less valuable then some bubble headed pop star? We value things that arguably may not be valuable, at the time they were giving ticker tape parades to the old Brooklyn Dodgers when they finally won the series in 55, or the Giants in 54 (no one bothered with the Yankees back then, when you win so much no one bothers lol), Jonas Salk invented and produced the first polio vaccine that worked, and if you talk to people of a certain age or older they will tell you just how much of a scourge it was, the fears for their children and such…yet he never got a ticker tape parade, and even as their kids were getting the vaccine, I wonder how many parents even knew he invented it?
The other thing to keep in mind is that with people like athletes and entertainers, it also is quite frankly supply and demand, too. The odds for example of being a pro football player, if you take all the kids who play it in high school, is something like .05%, and to be a top tier player is a fraction of that. Likewise, for the very successful musicians, the musical acts and perfomers we know, the odds of making it to that level are tiny, for every music act making millions, there probably 10’s of thousands playing dive bars and the like and struggling to make a living:).
Yep, that 20 million they pay Kelly Ripa could probably supply a couple of hundred teachers to struggling schools, or medical researchers working on cancer, but she does something for people, those who watch her value what she does, the advertisers think she brings them revenue, so there you go.
