Walter Cronkite’s Salary to Drop $850,000 a Year

Former anchorman Walter Cronkite will take an $850,000 cut in his annual CBS pay next fall as part of a new contract that he said Tuesday frees him to work elsewhere as a correspondent.

The 71-year-old newsman said he is considering several offers but declined to say whether any are from NBC or ABC. “I don’t think I’m free to talk about that yet,” said Cronkite, who has been with CBS News since 1950 and was its anchorman for 19 years. He yielded his spot on the “CBS Evening News” to Dan Rather in March, 1981, and has been paid $1 million a year since signing a seven-year contract in November that year.

He said he has no complaints about the new contract, which goes into effect on Nov. 4, his birthday. It pays him $150,000 annually for the next 10 years to serve as a CBS consultant but not, he said, as a special correspondent.

In his current pact, Cronkite is paid for what CBS calls “his services as a special correspondent for CBS News, and for consulting services and special assignments.” A recent CBS proxy statement for shareholders, in announcing his new, lower-paying contract, said Cronkite would be paid for “a variety of services to CBS,” including duty as a special correspondent.

But Cronkite, when asked for comment about the new contract, said the statement was in error when it said he would continue as a special correspondent. CBS officials haven’t told him they don’t want him as a correspondent anymore, he said, but as he understands the contract, “I’m perfectly free to go off and do whatever I want to do (as a reporter) after November.”

Asked if he would do that, he replied, “Well, I don’t know. I’m looking forward with great anticipation to my freedom. I’ve got a pile of offers here. I don’t want to work too damn hard. I’m kind of weighing several possibilities.”