Posted on 03/31/2012 6:27:38 AM PDT by lbryce
10:06 p.m. | Updated For nearly a year now, Al Gore and Joel Hyatt have been building their liberal cable news channel, Current TV, with the mercurial television anchorman Keith Olbermann at its center.
This week, the center collapsed.
Current said on Friday afternoon that it had fired Mr. Olbermann — one of the nation’s most prominent progressive speakers — just a year into his five-year, $50 million contract. It was the culmination of months of murky disputes between Mr. Olbermann and the channel that he was supposed to save from the throes of ratings oblivion.
Yet as inevitable as it might have seemed to some in the television business who know the long history of antipathy between Mr. Olbermann and his employers, it was nonetheless shocking to his fans, to his detractors and to staff members at Current when the announcement was made.
Forty-five minutes afterward, in a stream of Twitter messages, Mr. Olbermann threatened to take legal action against the channel and said its claims about him were untrue. In part because of the prospect of litigation, executives at Current declined to comment on the firing on Friday. But they immediately named as his replacement Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York, who took over Mr. Olbermann’s 8 p.m. time slot on Friday night.
By replacing Mr. Olbermann, Mr. Spitzer is getting a second shot at an 8 p.m. talk show; in 2010, two years after he resigned the governorship after he admitted having patronized a prostitution ring, he led a short-lived show on CNN. It was canceled in mid-2011.
In a letter posted on Current’s Web site, Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt wrote, “We are confident that our viewers will be able to count on Governor Spitzer to deliver critical information on a daily basis.”
(Excerpt) Read more at mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com ...
There are at least 4 other threads about this...
Current TV does not come in on our Dish.
He must have gotten a better offer from the Obama Administration, and wanted out.
O sucks (double entendre)
Current isn’t so bad. I’ve seen a few really good documentaries. I also use their obvious propaganda to teach ny kids how to recognize it (see their doc on F&F).
“there was a certain emotional satisfaction of posting a Keith Olbermann career eulogy a la Dan Rather”
And for as many times as this has been posted in the last couple of days, it still makes me smile.
Yes. Had I gone simply by visual cue (article in the front page news section) instead of doing it by article titl, I never would have posted it.
I’ve always felt a little pity for Keith Olbermann... I do not watch his show. Sadly, for Mr. Olbermann he CAN’T turn off Keith Olbermann... he must live with his miseable self each day... what a ghastly thought! I would be angry all the time too if I had to be Keith Olbermann!
I’ve always felt a little pity for Keith Olbermann... I do not watch his show. Sadly, for Mr. Olbermann he CAN’T turn off Keith Olbermann... he must live with his miseable self each day... what a ghastly thought! I would be angry all the time too if I had to be Keith Olbermann!
Really? Only now? I thought everyone dismissed Keith Olberman years ago.
Really? Only now? I thought everyone dismissed Keith Olberman years ago.
Un Roland pour Un Olivier
Bonne chance, neuf numéro de client
I have to give him credit, I never thought I would see a sports announcer more odious and pompous than Howard Cosell. (Recall, Cosell once had a non-sports talk show on the ABC network called Speaking of Everything, a spin off from his show, Speaking of Sports.) Of course, Cosell showed what a truly classless ingrate he was when he published his memoir, I Never Played the Game. With Olberman, we didn't have to wait.
Plus, Olbie took his odious pomposity to the realm of news as well...even though nearly no one ever watched him.
Now maybe he’ll have time to date Ann Coulter.
I cant believe Al Gore didnt know what to expect from Olbermann. I just think he expected Keiths fanbase to migrate from MSNBC. While Al is all for wasting other people’s money, he wasnt prepared to waste another 40 million when he realized it was just money down the toilet. Capitalist Scum!!!!!!!!
His fan base isn't large enough to qualify for the carpool lane.
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