OnlyInCalifornia
Southern California/Vegas
I dont think he was getting anything near 80 mil annually, that would be impossible because Howard himself was bringing his personality unlike Em but the fact that Howard did a re up years later and for Shade45 to still be succesful at the time I assume that Em also got some sort of renewal with heavy compensation somewhere down the line..especially after the renewed success of Recovery proving that Em was still a hot item. As you said..its one of their more popular shows so there has to be some sort of compensation. I say that because of that situation where Hot 97 was strong arming Black artists for years to do their Summer Jam show for free or their songs wont get played only for Em who never needed Hot 97 to be offered $300,000 to do SummerJam....I know low key a lot of Black artists were hating on that(hell, even Mr "I held you down for 6 summers" Jay Z spoke about it low key on "99 Problems""Got beef with radio if I don't play they show/They don't play my hits well I don't give a shyt SO"). If Hot97 is willing to spend that kind of paper for a show where they strong arm artists to play for free then that alone tells me that Em had some wide open doors for serious(no pun intended ) paper around that time. The fact that his earnings for Shade45 are unknown gives more weight to that theory.
Honestly on the music side landing Eminem was up there with landing Stern. Stern was the talk element and Shade45/Eminem was that music co sign. So you are probably right, there is no real way he didn't get paid. They dikked Ed Lover around though I feel like. He dipped on his show on SiriusXM for regular radio money.
I subscribe to SiriusXM and I can tell you that Shade45 gets special treatment in the sense their budget is bigger, they pay for talent, Shade45 pretty much as the most out of all the other stations. That says something. They still value him.