Kelly Clarkson Could Get Pay Raise as Her Talk Show Popularity Soars
Kelly Clarkson is hitting it out the park with her TV talk show as she is only second to Live With Kelly and Mark, per new ratings figures. Sources exclusively tell Life & Style that she could secure a major pay raise as her popularity continues to soar.
“America is voting with their remotes and it’s clear Kelly has a golden future, people are crazy about her,” the insiders spill about The Kelly Clarkson Show, which premiered in September 2019 and will soon be airing its 1000th episode.
“She’s earning more than a million a month from the show right now but it stands to reason that she’ll be able to get a substantial raise when she renegotiates her contract next.”
The Kelly Clarkson Show has already been greenlit for season 7, bringing it through 2026.
The sources tell Life & Style that “money’s not her main motivation for doing the show,” as Kelly, 42, “genuinely loves it and gets so much satisfaction interviewing the people she respects and engaging the audience, it’s a dream come true.”
Kelly is also aware that she is “making the network a huge amount of money, so it’s only fair that she gets a good chunk of it.”
“She’s a very sweet and humble person with more money than she ever imagined earning in her life, but her friends are still urging her to play hard ball when it comes to negotiating her next salary,” the tipsters reveal to Life & Style. “They’re telling her she’d be crazy not to ask for a bigger piece of the pie now that she’s proven her worth.”
The 2024-25 season averaged 1.2 million viewers per day, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Kelly Clarkson is a national treasure. We couldn’t wait to announce another season of The Kelly Clarkson Show, fresh off the top-rated Christmas in Rockefeller Center in which Kelly hosted,” Tracie Wilson, EVP of Syndication Studios and E! News at NBCUniversal, said in a statement in December 2024. “There’s an appetite in talk for stories that entertain and inspire, and The Kelly Clarkson Show is a shining star that delivers for our stations and connects with viewers across multiple generations in meaningful ways.”
Kelly returned to her show on Tuesday, March 18, following a two-week hiatus and came back with a few very special guests: Severance star Adam Scott and musician Marc Ribellet.
Fans have even more to look forward to this week as Bravo’s own Andy Cohen is slated to guest-host the Wednesday, March 19, episode.
Kelly’s brief absence from the show previously led many fans to wonder if there was any reason for concern.
“I am not Kelly Clarkson. I know this may shock many of you,” actor Simu Liu said at the top of the show on March 3. “But Kelly actually isn’t able to make it today, we’re sending her our very best.”
The American Idol winner is apparently “completely fine,” but she was “dealing with a personal matter that does not directly involve her,” sources told TMZ, noting it “isn’t a cause for alarm.”