Forbes Power Rankings

Pay: $302 million
Power Rank 7
The List

An incredibly lucrative year for the shock jock, thanks to his rich contract with Sirius Satellite Radio, which pays him $100 million annually. (Stern pays all the production costs for his show.) The company also awarded him a one-time $225 million bonus in Sirius stock for meeting subscription benchmarks. That prompted a breach-of-contract lawsuit from CBS Radio, his old employer, which claimed that Stern used CBS airtime to plug Sirius. Stern settled the case in May for an undisclosed sum. The outsized compensation package prompted massive first-quarter losses for Sirius, which has seen its stock tumble 32% to $4.41 since the new year.Earnings estimates are for June 2005 to June 2006. Figures rounded off where appropriate. Exact figures available on Forbes.com. Includes dollars earned solely from entertainment income. Management, agent and attorney fees have not been deducted. Estimates by forbes; sources include Billboard, Pollstar, Adams Media Research, Nielsen SoundScan and Nielsen BookScan. Rankings are generated by combining earnings with other metrics: Web mentions on Google press clips compiled by LexisNexis; TV/radio mentions by Factiva; and number of times a celebrity's face appeared on the cover of 26 major consumer magazines.

The Celebrity Forbes 100 List