Olbermann Counting Up...Happy At Last

[DeepModem Mom]

TV Newser: Thursday Mar 27, 2008
Olbermann Counting Up...Happy At Last
Gail Shister
TVNewser Columnist



Five years later, Keith "Take This Job and Shove It" Olbermann is still — dare we say it? — happy at MSNBC. In fact, when Olbermann marks the milestone with a special Countdown on NBC Sunday, he will be just six months away from breaking his personal record of continuous employment in the same Zip code: 5 1/2 years at ESPN in the '90s. Given that he re-upped last year through 2011, those are good odds.

"I had the opportunity to go somewhere else and I stayed put. It's the first time I had actually done that," says Olbermann, 49, known for a short fuse and a long memory. "I have found circumstances that please me on various levels. It used to be that when I arrived at work, my first thought was, 'How in the hell do I get out of this?'"

Countdown's 7pm ET/PT special is the show's second shot on the mothership. Among the highlights: Olbermann will "reveal" the 'Commander in chief threshold test' to which Sen. Hillary Clinton has referred. (Sample question: "Have you ever hosted a failed show on this network?")

Speaking of failures, Olbermann says he's grieved, but not surprised, that he's still signing off with the number of days since Bush's declaration of "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. The count as of today is 1,792.

"I think it had become pretty evident, if not exactly five years ago, certainly four years, 11 months ago, that this was a big mistake," he says. "As my dear history teacher from high school used to say, 'The bigger the mistakes politicians make, the more likely they are to stick with them.'...This is a president intent on killing Americans, or seeing Americans killed. He's too stubborn to do anything about it."...

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/msnbc/olbermann_counting_uphappy_at_last_80762.asp#more

[Saturday]

1. I'd be curious to know if his ratings

have gone up, down or stayed the same since he now takes on Hillary every night. He used to constantly talk about them (ratings) in reference to O'Reilly's. Don't watch him anymore, does he still do that?

[DeepModem Mom]

2. I haven't heard talk of ratings v. O'Reilly, but I could have missed it.

I, too, will be interested to watch KO's ratings going forward from his shift from Bush to Hillary.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. FYI, here are the latest nightly ratings, via TV Newser:

The Scoreboard: Tuesday, Mar. 25, 8 p.m. ET
25-54 demographic: (L +SD)

FNC O'Reilly 470
CNN Brown 348
MSNBC Olbermann 364
CNN HLN Grace 163

[Saturday]

5. That's quite a gap between Olbermann and O'Reilley.

And it looks like Campbell Brown is coming on strong too.

[DeepModem Mom]

6. Of course, that's just one night. It varies. A couple of times KO has surpassed O'Reilly --

but usually the gap is pretty wide. And he outperforms, by far, the other guys at MSNBC, really taking the network to a new level of viewers. I do think, however, that Campbell Brown is doing better in that hour on CNN than her predecessors.

On edit: LOL! When there's one of those really sensational crime stories in the news, Nancy Grace's viewers go way up, sometimes beyond her competition. (And now I've exposed myself as a seriously nerdy reader of TV Newser/Media Bistro!)

[totodeinhere]

9. Actually, KO has closed the gap.

BO used to have three times as many viewers as KO not too long ago. And there was even an instance not too long ago when KO actually beat him for the night.

[k8conant]

4. If only Aaron Brown were back on the air also...

then we'd have even more good stuff to watch.

[hifalutin]

7. I miss him too!

Such a charming guy with a lovely smile and a twinkle in his eyes.
I wonder where he is now?

[Stinky The Clown]

8. Last I heard he was teaching college in Washington State someplace.

[pixiesix]

10. aw

he's a cutie

[DeepModem Mom]

11. Welcome to DU, pixiesix!