Joe Buck – $5m
Joe Buck was born to be a sportscaster because, after all, he is the son of sportscaster Jack Buck. He even started his broadcasting career while he was still an undergraduate at Indiana University Bloomington.
Before starting his career at Fox, Buck called play-by-play for a minor league baseball team and was a reporter for the Triple-A All-Star Game at ESPN. In 1994, he was hired by Fox Sports, and at 25, he was the youngest man ever to announce a regular slate of National Football League games on TV. Buck worked his way up and has already called 20 World Series and 19 All-Star Games by 2018, which is the most of any play-by-play announcer on TV. He has also won numerous Sports Emmy Awards and is currently hosting Undeniable with Joe Buck on Audience Network.
Samantha Steele Ponder – $5m
Everyone knows her beautiful face, so it’s no wonder she earns such a massive-- salary. Samantha Steele Ponder is an ESPN sportscaster and is known for her work on College GameDay, where she replaced Erin Andrews in 2012. She is one of the most beloved reporters on ESPN and currently hosts Sunday NFL Countdown.
Ponder attended King’s College in Queens, New York, but she eventually graduated from Liberty University. It was in King’s College where she met Ben Keeperman, a college football researcher and manager with ABC Sports Radio. Her connection with Keeperman led to an internship at ABC, which then gave her the researcher-assistant job with ABC’s college football studio show. Once she transferred to Liberty University, she got a job as a sideline reporter—an offer from Liberty’s Sr. Sports Producer Bruce Carey. As a sports reporter, she met her husband NFL player Christian Ponder.
Martha Raddatz – $2.5m
Even though Martha Raddatz dropped out of college, she had a good start to her broadcasting career. She first worked at a local station in Utah and later, became a chief correspondent at WCVB-TV, an ABC News Boston affiliate. In 1993, she covered the Pentagon for National Public Radio. She came to ABC News in 1999 and was the State Department correspondent, and in May 2003, she became the senior national security correspondent. She reported extensively from Iraq and in June 2006, Raddatz and ABC News were the first in the world to break the news of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death and his location.
Raddatz is now ABC’s Chief Global Affairs Correspondent and reports for World News Tonight with David Muir and Nightline. She is also the main fill-in anchor for This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
Amy Robach – $300 Thousand
Amy Robach first worked at Fox’s WTTG in Washington, D.C. before moving to MSNBC in 2003. She spent four years in MSNBC where she anchored two hours in the morning and filled in on Morning Joe as well as Countdown with Keith Olbermann. In 2007, she was a co-anchor of Weekend Today, but in May 2012, she left and transferred to ABC News.
Her first job at ABC was on Good Morning America as a correspondent but was later promoted as the show’s news anchor in 2014. On April 23, 2018, Robach left GMA to be the new anchor of 20/20 alongside David Muir, although she continues to work on GMA to cover major news and as a breaking-news anchor.
Dan Rather – $6m
Dan Rather spent four decades of his career with CBS Evening News. He has covered some of the most important historical events of his time such as the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. In fact, he was on the scene of the Kennedy assassination in 1963, and his report of the assassination promoted him in CBS News. Rather, along with Tim Brokaw and Peter Jennings, are named the “Big Three” news anchors because of their long years with their network’s nightly news program.
Rather worked as a foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam and later, a White House correspondent covering the Nixon presidency including the Watergate scandal. He also contributed to 60 Minutes. He retired from CBS in 2005, but he did not stop working. He hosted Dan Rather Reports, Dan Rather Presents, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV. In 2018, he started hosting an online newscast, The News with Dan Rather on YouTube.