Last week it was all smiles as Ashton Kutcher attended CBS's annual upfront presentation in New York as the new face of top-rated comedy, 'Two and a Half Men.'

Now it seems as though Warner Bros. and CBS may not be making longterm plans for the veteran series with Kutcher.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Kutcher's new deal, which will net him an estimated $750,000 per episode, is only for one year, even though executives are still said to be keen to continue the money-spinning 'Men' for at least another two or three years.

After months of negotiation, the three main cast members of 'The Big Bang Theory' have signed contracts increasing their pay by more than $140,000 per episode. According to Deadline Hollywood, Kaley Cuoco, Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons will now earn $200,000 per episode for season 4 of their hit CBS show.

The trio was previously making $60,000 each (a paltry sum, considering the show's success), but decided to renegotiate after the series became a ratings hit. Their new deals will see a $50,000 per episode pay raise each season and a percentage of the show's back-end profit, which adds around $50,000 to each episode's paycheck.

How much?! 'TV Guide Magazine' has published its list of the top earners on TV, and while the contents of some celebrity pay packets are eye-watering, and the stars of a hit show can still expect to be making big money, the go-go days of swoon-inducing mega-deals may be over.

According to tvguide.com, studio and network executives have taken a "get-tough policy" when negotiating contracts for the upcoming fall shows. The salary for a lead role has reportedly dropped from $150,000 to $200,000 per episode to around $75,000 to $125,00. Still not exactly chump change, but "no one broke the bank this year on anything" says a former studio head.

Struggling in the face of falling ad revenues and falling re-run profits due to the rise of DVRs and on-line viewing, executives have stood firm on the new hardball policy. Sources say that one much sought-after, veteran actor was recently in talks for the lead in a new show. However, his asking price was $250,000 per episode. When he wouldn't lower it to below $200,000 per episode, executives passed on him and hired someone else instead.

Reports of Ducky's departure have been premature. In an update on the 'NCIS' cast dispute that we reported the other day, David McCallum is signed for next season. That's right, his manager told TV Guide that the previous stories had incorrectly put him in the same boat with Michael Weatherly, Sean Murray and Pauley Perrette.

McCallum's manager explained, "I'm sure some of the others are negotiating, but he's not affected by it. He falls into the Mark Harmon/Rocky Carroll category. He's signed on for additional seasons. He's excited to be coming back to the show and can't wait to see everybody."

Forbes has an interesting article about the sources of Glenn Beck's income. Interestingly, only $2 million of his $32 million annual salary comes from his Fox News show where he gets most of his publicity. The majority of the money comes from his radio and publishing empire. It could be said that Fox News is the platform from which he hawks the rest of his wares.

But as Master Yogurt said, merchandising is where the real money from the movie comes from. Pretty soon I'm sure we'll be seeing the Glenn Beck action figure, the Glenn Beck cookbook, the Glenn Beck barbecue grill and the Glenn Beck video game for the Wii which will come with its own interactive chalkboard.

However, to put things in perspective: no matter how much the man makes from his media empire, Glenn Beck will still make a lot less in annual income than Oprah.

Sometimes it's true that all's well that ends well. And sometimes to reach that happy ending, arms are twisted, feelings are hurt, and bad blood is spilled. In the case of The Young and the Restless and actor Eric Braeden, there was a good deal of acrimony on both sides. The fact that Braeden is back in the fold now and he will continue as Victor Newman for the foreseeable future, doesn't obscure the fact that it was a nasty situation.

You think the recession hasn't hit the TV industry yet? Here's some proof it has: the stars of How I Met Your Mother received pay raises...but not the kind of big money you've heard about in years gone by. The ensemble of five, Josh Radnor, Jason Segel, Cobie Smulders, Neil Patrick Harris and Alyson Hannigan renegotiated with the producers (20th Century Fox TV) to boost their salaries to $90,000-$120,000 per episode. That's still a lot of money in today's economic strife, but compared to Two and a Half Men's Charlie Sheen's $825,000 per ep, it's downright modest.

We mentioned that Matthew Fox (along with Evangeline Lilly) was in negotiations for a higher salary. Well, it looks like he got it. Fox will now be earning about $225,000 per episode of Lost, as opposed to the approximately $150,000 per episode he was making before.

I guess Jack Shepard will be with us through the rest of the season (and likely the rest of the series). If the character were more disposable, it's likely he would have gone the way of other now-dead Lost characters such as Charlie.

Picture This Television, the production team behind Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List and Celebrity Poker Showdown is creating a new game show for Bravo called Paycheck. The game show pits seven contestants against one another to try and figure out how much money they each make. The players must guess with the aid of questions, clues, and just plain, well, guessing. The person who guesses the correct salaries of all the players wins $25,000.

The whole "try to guess something about someone" idea sounds awfully close to Identity, and that game show isn't exactly the most compelling one on TV right now. Still, Celebrity Poker Showdown isn't a bad show, so maybe the folks behind this one have a way to make it more exciting than it sounds. Bravo has placed an order for the game show pilot.

Teri Hatcher reportedly got tough with Buena Vista Television, the company that produces Desperate Housewives. She demanded a cut from all the merchandise that is sold with the Desperate Housewives moniker and she got her way. According to various sources, the deal puts her among the highest paid actresses on television (a DH publicist contacted us to deny she's the "highest paid" actress on television, as we originally reported). She currently rakes in $315,000 per episode of DH and will make an extra $1 million for one week of work to pimp DH merchandise such as a new video game, a board game, and new ringtones.

Who do you think deserves to be the highest paid actress on television?

Pay raises. The original cast members were each offered more money in exchange for adding another year to their contracts, which means another year living in Hawaii. Oh, I bet that decision was real tough. The raise bumps the actors up to about $80,000 per episode, which is a raise of anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 per episode for some actors. The actors agreeing to another year are Evangeline Lilly (Kate), Josh Holloway (Sawyer), Naveen Andrews (Sayid), Dominic Monaghan (Charlie), Terry O'Quinn (Locke), Jorge Garcia (Hurley), Daniel Dae Kim (Jin), Yunjin Kim (Sun), and Harold Perrineau (Michael). Matthew Fox also signed for another year, but his contract was even sweeter with a reported $250,000 bonus. The only person missing from that list is Emilie de Ravin, who plays Claire. Not sure what that means. The raises put the core Lost characters on the same pay scale as all four Desperate Housewives.

On television, they live in McMansions and get a big, fat tax break for being in that upper-income bracket. In the real world, they probably drive Subarus and are stressed out about paying for college. An article on a job website explores the real-life salaries of some of our favorite characters, including the improbable bank account of Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw (I never said the article was brand new). It seems, as a sex columnist in NYC, Carrie probably would've earned $57,000. In Manhattan? That's poverty!

Other characters and their real-life salaries:

An article in the LA Times details just how much cash the two head honchos at Disney are raking in these days. Be prepared: you may turn green with envy. Or, just at the thought of all that money. Chief Executive Robert Iger got a 33% raise when he took over in October, bringing his annual income to $2 million. Wait. There's much, much more. If Disney does well, he will get to enjoy a $7.25 million bonus (whose bonus is nearly four times their annual salary???). He also received 500,000 shares of restricted stock. Restricted? I guess that means he can't sink it into Pixar, eh? Michael Eisner, on the other hand, earned $1 million in regular salary, plus a $9.1 million bonus. That's nowhere near the income he got in 1998 when he exercised some stock options that had been accumulating for years, and made $576 million. Eisner retired on September 30th but he will continue to received bonuses in the sum of $7.5 million through September of 2007. But don't worry about Michael Eisner. He'll be okay. He has a job at CNBC.

This post would have been more fitting for Father's Day, so you'll have to excuse me for not being more vigilant. At any rate, George Jefferson has been chosen as the top-earning black father of all time (in 2005 dollars) according to a survey done by Salary.com. The survey was not race specific, but it's interesting to note that Sherman Helmsley's cranky dry cleaning business owner was the only black father to make it into the top ten (he ranked fifth). The list also included Bill Cosby's Heathcliff Huxtable (The Cosby Show); James Avery's Philip Banks (Fresh Prince of Bel-Air); and Reginald VelJohnson's Carl Winslow (Family Matters). Redd Foxx's Fred Sanford also made the list, albeit toward the bottom. I'm listing him anyway because his theme song gets stuck in my head a lot.