ICYMI: Update On The Progressive Movement
Bill Smith's Editorial Opinion: Setting aside the political cartoons about the SOTU. The best cartoon of the extended week comes from the Townhall cartoon stable. It is Glenn Foden's cartoon satirically giving us an "Update on the Progressive Movement": Keith Olbermann's firing by MSNBC - the walking dead channel. Even with Olbermann leaving MSNBC, Foden rightly reflects that MSNBC which claims to be "a leader in breaking news, video and original journalism" is in fact a useless ignored "crap" house.
Tags: Glenn Foden, political cartoon MSNBC, Keith Obermann, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
Tags: Glenn Foden, political cartoon MSNBC, Keith Obermann, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
Posted by Bill Smith at 9:04 PM - Post Link
4 Comments:
This has EVERYTHING to do with Comcast buying NBC. Comcast is a center-right corporation, and they bought NBC to take down the Soros funded left-wing nutjobs like Olbermann...
Steven,
I hope you are correct!
While Keith Olbermann’s departure from his nightly cable news show “Countdown” appeared abrupt, it came in fact after “years of behind-the-scenes tensions” with MSNBC, according to a report.
Throughout his career Olbermann has been known as a “mercurial personality with a track record of attacking his superiors and making early exits,” Bill Carter and Brian Stelter wrote in The New York Times.
After Olbermann’s stint at Fox Sports Network ended in acrimony in 2001, Rupert Murdoch, head of the network’s parent News Corporation, said: “I fired him. He’s crazy.”
Many viewers were stunned when Olbermann — MSNBC’s top-rated host — suddenly announced his departure from the network at the end of his Friday, Jan. 21 show.
“But underlying the decision, which one executive involved said was not a termination but a ‘negotiated separation,’ were years of behind-the scenes-tension, conflicts and near terminations,” according to the Times.
That tension was so intense that Olbermann occasionally threatened not to come to work and producers had to notify a substitute anchor to be on standby.
He once complained that the topics he addressed on his show were “stories my producers force me to cover.”
After MSNBC suspended Olbermann in November for making donations to Democratic congressional candidates, he threatened to appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America” to protest the decision. Jeff Zucker, head of NBC Universal, was ready to fire Olbermann on the spot if he did so, an NBC executive told The Times.
Olbermann alluded to the discord in his departure announcement, saying that “there were many occasions, particularly in the last two and a half years, where all that surrounded the show, but never the show itself, was just too much for me.”
The New York Post reports that Olbermann — who began on “Countdown” in March 2003 — was trying to convince his bosses to let him out of his $7 million-a-year contract as early as last spring.
Olbermann was not looking forward to working for Comcast, which at the time was negotiating to purchase NBC Universal, according to the Post. Comcast Chairman Brian Roberts is a prominent Republican, and there were also whispers that Comcast was forcing Olbermann out.
Comcast has denied it was involved in Olbermann’s departure. And Eric Deggans writes in the St. Petersburg Times that “it would make no sense for [Comcast] to start a tenure running NBC by decapitating the cable channel’s biggest star.”
In leaving MSNBC, Olbermann reportedly agreed to stay away from television news for six to nine months. But he can still work in radio and on the Internet — and would be free to return to TV for the 2012 elections.
MSNBC’s ratings for its 8 p.m. show rose 50 percent on the first night Keith Olbermann did not host the hour.
With Lawrence O’Donnell hosting on Monday, the network had 1.5 million total viewers, up from Olbermann’s average of just over 1 million.
Rachel Maddow, the 9 p.m. host, also enjoyed about a 50 percent ratings bump on Monday, rising to 1.4 million viewers.
O’Donnell’s “Last Word” trounced CNN’s “Parker Spitzer” in the time slot — the latter drew just 483,000 viewers — but was trounced in turn by Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News, which had 3.5 million viewers.
O’Donnell was likely the beneficiary of curiosity over what he might say about Olbermann’s departure. O’Donnell, whose show previously aired at 10 p.m., did say he owed his introduction to the network to his predecessor.
O'Reilly also discussed Olbermann, although he did not mention him by name and instead referred to him as a "hateful commentator."
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