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Last week brought the appalling news that pill-popping professional idiot Rush Limbaugh signed an eight-year, $400 million contract with Premiere Radio Networks. He'll now collect $38 million a year, which he'll probably direct to some of the passions detailed in a NYT Magazine profile of Limbaugh this past weekend, like La Flor Dominicana Double Ligero Chisel cigars, private jets (he just purchased a Gulfstream G550) and life-size oil paintings of himself. (The deal also provided him with a $100 million signing bonus.) But what about the rest of the news media heavyweights—how much coin are they taking home annually? The salaries of America's most beloved anchors and blowhards of various political persuasions after the jump.

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Katie Couric
$15 million to $22 million
 Reports vary as to how much CBS CEO Les Moonves plunked down to lure Katie to the network, but whatever it was there's little question that it was way, way too much for a last-place finish in the nightly news race.

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Matt Lauer
$13 million
 Lauer signed a five-year deal with NBC in 2006 that landed him his current salary of $13 million a year. It's still not as much as Katie Couric made when she served as Today co-anchor. Couric made an estimated $15 million a year before decamping to CBS.

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Diane Sawyer
$12 million
 ABC is said to have boosted her pay in 2006 to persuade her to stay on at the network and Good Morning America after she was passed over to host World News Tonight in favor of Charles Gibson.

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Glenn Beck
 $10 million
 The "funny" conservative host of the syndicated Glenn Beck Program and the host of a lightly-viewed show on Headline News signed a five-year contract extension with Premiere Radio Networks for a reported $50 million.

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Bill O'Reilly
$10 million
O'Reilly is believed to bring home upwards of $10 million a year from his gigs hosting The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News, his syndicated radio show, and his numerous speaking engagements. You'll have to pay $50K for the privilege of booking him for your next corporate event.

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Brian Williams
$10 million
 Williams' reported salary comes out to a little over a dollar for every viewer of NBC Nightly News. Williams' contract, which he signed in 2004, runs through 2009.

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Meredith Vieira
$8.5 million
The former View co-host accepted a four-year, $30-million deal from Jeff Zucker in 2006 to take over for Katie Couric on Today. She earns just about half of what her co-anchor, Matt Lauer, takes home.

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Charles Gibson
$8 million
Even though Gibson and Brian Williams run neck and neck in the ratings, Gibson's reported salary is $2 million shy of his rival's.

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Shepard Smith
$7.5 million
The Fox News host signed a three-year, $7.5 million-a-year deal in November 2007, which makes him Fox News' second highest-paid personality behind Bill O'Reilly.

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Lou Dobbs
$6 million
Dobbs' pay package of $6 million a year is derived from his nightly CNN show, Lou Dobbs Tonight, as well as his new syndicated radio program, Lou Dobbs Radio, which airs on United Stations Radio Networks.

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Sean Hannity
$5 million
Hannity, who is second only to Limbaugh in the world of talk radio, signed a $25 million, five-year deal with ABC Radio in 2004. (He's believed to make a good deal more than $5 million a year when you account for the money he makes from Fox News; his cable news contract has never been disclosed.) Lately Hannity has supposedly been trying to extricate himself from the contract so he can re-negotiate a better deal.

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Chris Matthews
$5 million
The shouty MSNBC host may be in line for a pay cut when his contract expires in 2009. According to the New York Times, "NBC officials clearly would like to renew it for considerably less than the $5 million a year he is making now."

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Anderson Cooper
$4 million
Cooper signed a new contract with CNN in January 2007. The deal doubled his salary and permits him to now contribute to CBS's 60 Minutes.

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Keith Olbermann
$4 million
Olbermann caused a bit of a stir in late 2006 when he asked NBC to quadruple his salary to over $4 million a year. NBC re-signed him to a four-year deal but didn't disclose the terms of the deal, though obviously it was close enough to what he'd asked for that he elected to stick around.