Morning TV Shows Make Ridiculous Amounts of Money

The TV industry is under attack, losing packs of viewers and subscribers by the month and by the year. Among the questions that must first be answered is the future of morning TV, which accounts for the majority of revenue brought in by the broadcast news shows.

On Tuesday, Dylan Byers revealed information from an internal sales presentation that details just how lucrative top NBC News shows are. For a hint: it's Today and then everybody else.

Though $408 million a year may sound like a lot, given trends on linear television, that $408 million could soon dip, perhaps substantially.

Morning shows trump dayside and evening programming, making any declines that much more alarming.

Morning TV is losing hundreds of thousands of viewers every year. The average number of viewers among adults 25 to 54, the demographic coveted by advertisers, is nearly half what it was a decade ago. Today and GMA are making at least $350 million each, but for how long?

A journalist can spin most stories, but this one won't be so easy:

If morning TV cannot find a way to weather the storm, programs that air later in the day could first get hit.

"There is no NBC News without Today," a television news executive told NBC. "There is no ABC News without GMA."