Whoopi Goldberg's salary just got cut from roughly $8 million a year to somewhere in the mid-seven figures. Joy Behar took a hit from her $7 million. Sunny Hostin's $1.6 million and Sara Haines' $1.5 million both got trimmed. And Alyssa Farah Griffin — the 37-year-old new mom making mid-six figures — asked for a raise and was told no.
The ladies designer wardrobe budget got slashed too.
ABC's The View, which has been on the air since 1997 and just wrapped Season 29, is undergoing what insiders are describing as serious cost-cutting. Salaries reduced across the board. The filming space has been downgraded. Special episodes, like Halloween, cancelled. Product integration deals are drying up. According to insiders the mood behind the scenes is not great and tensions with ABC executive is growing.
An insider put it plainly: "They're all mad because they were all wearing really expensive designer clothes, and now it's the same budget of a Wendy Williams-type show versus a marquee daytime show. They keep downsizing and downsizing and downsizing."
Now, the obvious irony here is that these are the same women who spend five days a week lecturing the rest of us about how American flags are racist, ICE agents are Nazis, President Trump is an inept ego-maniac who is working hard to steal the upcoming Mid-term elections for Republicans and how the 75 million Americans who voted for him in 2024 all have moral failings.
All six co-hosts of the show have taken pay cuts in the last year. Ana Navarro, who has made a second career out of pretending to be a Republican despite calling conservatives heartless when it comes to working people, is watching her own employer decide that designer wardrobes are no longer in the budget. Alyssa Farah Griffin, the designated "conservative" voice at the table, but who hates President Trump, the one who exists so executives can claim they present all sides of issues, got her raise request denied. Whoopi, who was making over $8 million a year, is now reportedly being paid somewhere in the mid sevens.
Some might argue this is just standard network belt-tightening, the kind of thing happening across the media industry. But a good show can survive a dip in viewership if the advertisers don't leave. As it turns out, they are. Advertisers are reportedly turning to other daytime talk shows to spend their dollars with. Turns out The View is turning viewers AND advertisers off.
This is the trajectory of a show that confused cultural influence with commercial value. For years, The View operated as though being the loudest panel on daytime television was the same as being the most valuable. The ratings told a different story. The ad revenue told a different story. And now the budget tells the final chapter of that story.
