As Starz prepares to hold its first shareholders meeting as a spin-off TV production brand without its sister Lionsgate studio, the company revealed C-suite pay for top executives.
Jeffrey Hirsch, who spent a decade at Stars and took over as CEO in 2019, saw his compensation total $6.7 million between salary, incentives and awards, a securities filing disclosed April 2 showed. His current contract runs until December 2028.
Allison Huffman, who oversees content and revenue as president, received $2.7 million while CFO Scott McDonald saw a total payout of $2 million in FY25.
“The media landscape is evolving rapidly, but spin-offs, mergers and consolidations are creating opportunities for focused, profitable players like Starz,” Hirsch wrote in a letter to shareholders. “With a highly capable technology stack and proven playbooks for migrating first-line businesses to a digital-led business, we believe our business is well positioned to participate in industry M&A as a buyer of complementary assets that align with our audience, all while maintaining disciplined leverage and cash generation.”
In its filing, Starz also noted that it signed a consulting services contract with longtime Lionsgate executive Michael Burns last May, which includes a $50,000 monthly fee along with a “one-time stock grant of $3,000,000 of performance-based non-qualified stock options.”
The company cut 7% (or fewer than 40 employees) of its workforce in March as part of a resource shift at the company, which now has 517 employees in its offices in Santa Monica, New York, and Inglewood, Colorado. Part of the restructuring includes cutting spending on cash content this year, CFO McDonald said on an earnings call with analysts in February.
Starz, which revealed 17.63 million U.S. subscribers as of December, is supported by franchises such as Outlanderwhich bowed its eighth season this year, and powera five-season crime drama that yielded multiple spinoffs. In addition to Lionsgate, Starz has programming production deals with Universal (through 2029) and library output deals with Disney (in 2026), Sony (through 2027) and Warner Bros. (until 2028).
The company, incorporated in British Columbia, is holding a shareholders meeting on May 15.
