Keith Olbermann restarts the clock on 'Countdown'
NEW YORK � Keith Olbermann, the sharp, sarcastic and supremely self-confident commentator, is ready for action again. Five months after abruptly ending an eight-year run as MSNBC's top-rated host, he moves his Countdown Monday night (8 ET/PT) to tiny Current TV, the 6-year-old cable channel co-founded by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, two like-minded liberals.
By Eileen Blass, USA TODAY
Keith Olbermann left MSNBC in January. On Monday night he moves his show to tiny Current TV, co-founded by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt.
By Eileen Blass, USA TODAY
Keith Olbermann left MSNBC in January. On Monday night he moves his show to tiny Current TV, co-founded by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt.
He has a tall order: persuading his audience of 1 million viewers to follow him to a cable Siberia that averages 50,000 in prime time, and whose initial concept ? airing news content uploaded by viewers ? was quickly usurped by YouTube.
"Obviously, we will lose a significant numerical part of the audience to start," he says in a three-hour interview over oysters and tuna, hobbling on a cane after a workout-related foot injury. Current reaches just 60 million homes, two-thirds the total of MSNBC, and even fans who receive the channel might not easily find him.
"I went through this already at MSNBC," he says, describing his old home as a "chaotic" also-ran with no identity when he rejoined it in March 2003 (he had left in 1997). By fall 2003, "we had 200,000 viewers ? not a lot ? and it grew, and the network grew around it. I was kind of on my own, Chris (Matthews) and me," until former guest hosts Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell, who inherited his time slot, got their own shows.
"To some degree, and I don't claim credit for anybody's individual success, but I got the ball rolling for everybody that's on that network," he says. "So the idea of going off on my own into isolation? Been there already."
That doesn't make his new gig any easier. Ask Oprah Winfrey, the hugely popular talk-show host whose new cable network is struggling. Current's news presence for now is limited to Vanguard, an award-winning documentary series that returns for a fifth season tonight, and will follow Countdown on Mondays.
Hyatt says as chief news officer, Olbermann, 52, will provide "input and advice" in a wholesale makeover of Current as a home for political analysis and commentary rivaling the cable-news channels' prime-time lineups. "He has a huge loyal following, and that following will come to Current," helping the channel gain a toehold in the opinion wars. "You don't have impact and influence unless you have a large audience."
Olbermann promises team coverage around Republican primaries and debates ? "there are gonna be people involved in this who will cause viewers' jaws to drop" ? and a 9 ET/PT companion show within six months. His own version of Maddow? "If things go the way I hope they're going to go long-term, I hope it's the real Rachel," he says. (Maddow declined to comment.)
Not going to ?Glenn Beck it?
Olbermann, a loud, liberal lightning rod in a polarized political-news landscape, hasn't often blended well with buttoned-down corporate culture. His reputation for intemperance with underlings and bosses ? he has had many ? has been well-chronicled. He started in radio, moved to CNN in 1981, worked as a local sportscaster in Boston and L.A. and co-hosted ESPN's SportsCenter.
Who initiated the most recent split? (Long pause.) "Ultimately, me," he says, though it was finalized so abruptly that he told his staff during a commercial break on Jan. 21, midway through what would become his final show on MSNBC.
He had reached that conclusion well before his brief suspension in November for donating to three congressional campaigns. And he says the friction at MSNBC intensified after the 2008 death of Tim Russert, "the human scaffolding around the circumstances that were changing" who "ran interference for me."
His reps mused over his next career move, from a satellite radio show to an Internet platform to a network with a part-time news presence such as BBC America. Ultimately, "we used as a model what AMC did," which was to take Mad Men, an HBO reject, and nurture it into a beloved cult hit that redefined the once-moribund network as a top destination for cable dramas. "We thought, maybe there's an AMC out there that wants to step into news.
"There were a lot of things I interpreted as signs. Not just NBC, but the whole concept of news as a commodity being sold by a multinational corporation" with stakes in theme parks and jet engines. He feared interference after learning his longstanding feud with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, who made NBC parent GE an on-air target, led top executives to meet in search of a cease-fire. "As those signposts got that much more numerous ? I began to evaluate that it was the right time to go."
But the suspension might have been the final straw. He insists it wasn't covered under his contract, "and the evidence that it went from being indefinite and unpaid to being a long weekend may support me without giving away any secrets." (MSNBC declined to comment.)
When his manager attempted to hammer out more definitive language, on the eve of NBC's takeover by Comcast, "the message came back they didn't want to formalize any new terminology, and I thought, 'Well then, we're talking about when is this going to end.'"
When it did, "Al (Gore) didn't wait." He called the next day, a Saturday, and asked ? here Olbermann offers an uncanny impersonation of the former senator's Tennessee twang ? "Would you like to do your show here on Current?"
About two weeks later, they announced a deal, though neither side would discuss terms of his contract. One of Olbermann's central missions on his new platform will be to spotlight what he sees as the corrupting influence of anonymous corporate political donations, permitted by the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision. "This is a change in the universal solvent: Money can be applied in a thousand different ways that, while not illegal, are clearly immoral to a political campaign."
Isn't he preaching to the choir? "You can make a very good argument" for that, he says, but "each time you hear it, someone supposedly in the choir says, 'Holy crap, it's worse than I thought.' I'm not going to be a politician, I'm not going to stage a rally, I'm not going to Glenn Beck or Jon Stewart it. I'm going to go, 'This sucks, here's why.'"
Regular Tea Party segments
Ultimately, Countdown will mirror the MSNBC version in many ways. "We have a really great car and we have to reverse-engineer it," he says. But there will be changes.
Worst Person in the World, a segment that demonized O'Reilly and other nemeses, will resume as the "slightly gentler" Worst Person of the Day. "I stopped it, especially after (Arizona Rep.) Gabby Giffords got shot, because I was afraid somebody who heard it might think I meant it. But people really missed it; there was a certain catharsis it provided."
He'll have regular segments on the Tea Party, and at least a weekly feature titled Convince Me I'm Wrong, in which "people with whom I would ordinarily agree will have entirely different viewpoints."
He'll feature regular contributors such as comedian Richard Lewis, actor Donald Sutherland, law professor Jonathan Turley, Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi and filmmakers Michael Moore and Ken Burns, and he plans segments on science and sports. Other trademarks won't make the move, including the literal countdown, where stories were presented in reverse order of importance, which was "always an artifice. We will be leaving the numbers on the mantelpiece of television history."
Olbermann is featured prominently in Those Guys Have All the Fun, a new oral history on ESPN, which he calls "an interesting business history" but not much of a read: "It basically breaks down to 50 pages of what an a--hole Olbermann was, 50 pages of what a genius Olbermann was, 50 pages on everyone else who's ever been on the air, and the remaining 600 pages are which executives thought up the ESPYs and signed the contracts with the NCAA to put on lacrosse games."
He doesn't quibble with either description of him. But the book neatly "explains my problems with management; they were far greater prima donnas than I was." He often notes that three of his nine employers subsequently rehired him, so he couldn't have been all that difficult.
"Keith is a demanding guy, and he expects quite a bit," says Dave Sarosi, a former Countdown segment producer tapped to executive-produce Countdown 2.0. "He can envision the entire show in his head before he sits down to write a script. But I'd rather he be demanding than not care."
Olbermann says all he ever wanted was to be listened to. "Every time I've ever complained, yelled, bitched, moaned, whined, whatever it was, it was for the benefit of the show. It was not selfishly motivated, it was ? an attempt to get them whatever they wanted ? higher ratings, more credibility, more money. And the response has been, 'Shut up and talk,' in nine times out of 10. I'm on employer No. 10, and they have said, 'Tell me more.' That makes all the difference in the world."
Emmanuelle Vaugier Gisele Bündchen Eliza Dushku Saira Mohan Pamela Anderson
posted by roundglut90 @ 8:12 AM
0 Comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home