What Is Linda Cohn's Net Worth and Salary?
Linda Cohn is a veteran American sportscaster who has a net worth of $12 million. Linda Cohn's annual salary at ESPN is $3 million. She signed a long term contract extension with ESPN in 2018.
Ever since she began a career in sports talk radio in NYC and Seattle, the Long Island native has had a successful career spanning decades, and one she's also passionate about. Cohn partly attributes her tremendous success to being a massive sports fan and finding passion in engaging other fans. She has clocked over 30 years at ESPN and is the longest-tenured anchor of SportsCenter.
Cohn's unique style includes her thick New York accent, and while hockey is back on ESPN, she has spent a great deal of her three-decade tenure championing a sport not featured by the network. No matter the medium, the seasoned sportscaster maintains a casual, albeit thoroughly researched and prepped conversation for sports fans. Notably, she has held onto her radio roots long enough, being also an analyst on SIRIUS XM's NHL Network Radio on Mondays during hockey season. Besides, she makes regular appearances on Mad Dog Sports Radio.
Early Life
Linda Cohn was born on November 10, 1959, on Long Island, New York. She was inspired to love sports by her father, with whom she'd watch sports on TV. At 15, her mother introduced her to a hockey league where she could play with 8-9 year-old boys. As a teen, Cohn excelled at ice hockey as a goaltender, which saw her playing in her high school's boys league. While she didn't make her high school hockey team as a junior, she did as a senior. Following her graduation from Newfield High School, Linda attended the State University of New York at Oswego, where she played on the women's hockey team. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication in 1981.
Career Debut
Cohn kicked off her professional career in 1981 as a sports anchor for WALK-AM-FM (now WALK-FM), a radio station based in Patchogue, New York. She left the station in 1984 and went on to work in the same role for four other New York-based radio stations. Linda did this until 1987 and even took a brief term as an update person at WFAN, still in New York City.
Breakthrough Years
When ABC hired her in 1987, Cohn achieved a remarkable feat and set a sportscasting record as the first full-time U.S. female sports anchor on a national radio network. She then anchored WABC until 1989.
In 1989, she debuted on SportsChannel America, the then-top competitor of ESPN, marking her first television break. In the same year, she hosted a call-in radio sports show in her area, New York. Cohn served as a reporter at the SportsChannel America Network until KIRO-TV hired her to work as a sports anchor in Seattle, Washington.
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ESPN
Cohn landed a job at ESPN in 1992, which saw her return to the East Coast. This was to work on the SportsCenter program, the first of which she anchored alongside Chris Myers on July 11th of the same year. She has also been featured in several of the show's "This Is SportsCenter" commercials. While she was flourishing in the next stage of her career, Linda almost lost her job in 1994 because the network reasoned that she was not demonstrating her love for sports well enough on TV. Thankfully, the company gave her a six-month window to improve and even hired a video coach to help nurture her. Cohn later made her mark as a prognosticator during the 1997 NCAA basketball tournament. Her group that year for ESPN made an accurate forecast of the 15-seeded Coppin State University's stunning victory over South Carolina in the first round.
In 2005, Cohn signed a contract extension with ESPN, which saw the addition of play-by-play for WNBA telecasts to her role. In June 2008, ESPN announced that Linda would be a regular anchor for the morning block of SportsCenter, which would launch early in August that year. She should have co-anchored the block alongside Steve Berthiaume from 6 to 9 am on weekdays. However, ESPN announced several weeks later that the new SportsCenter morning block would scale down to six hours from nine. As of February 21, 2016, Cohn hosted her 5,000th edition of SportsCenter, setting a record for the program's anchors.
While ESPN suspended Cohn for her controversial opinion during an April 2017 radio interview, the network announced in mid-July of the following year that she had signed a new deal to extend her stay at the company. Throughout her ESPN career, she has commented, interviewed, reported, written, and called play-by-play. Linda is still a regular anchor of SportsCenter from 1-3 p.m. ET Monday through Friday. She also hosts the podcast "Listen Closely to Linda Cohn."
Memoir
In 2008, Cohn published "Cohn-Head: A No-Holds-Barred Account of Breaking Into the Boy's Club," a memoir narrating her passion for sports and her numerous experiences working on the SportsCenter program. In it, she candidly describes her rise to the top in a largely male-dominated sportscasting world.
Personal Life
In 2008, Linda divorced her husband, Stew Kaufman, after being married for over 27 years. The couple has two children. In 2014, Cohn earned recognition as one of the 25 most influential women in sports, a well-deserved title. Needless to say, the Long Island native is a massive sports fan whose teams include the New York Mets, New York Knicks, New York Rangers, and New York Giants.
