March 28, 2024

Keith Olbermann Clashes With Current TV

At his new home, Al Gore’s Current TV, he has done it in record time.

Mr. Olbermann, who was hired last year to be the top star of the upstart liberal news source, had been on the job scarcely three months when trouble started. He declined Current’s requests to host special hours of election coverage, apparently out of frustration about technical difficulties that have plagued his 8 p.m. program, “Countdown.”

The channel decided to produce election shows without him. Mr. Olbermann, however, said he did not know that, and on Tuesday, the day of the Iowa caucus, the cold war of sorts reached a flash point. He held a staff meeting even though “Countdown” had been pre-empted.

Perceiving it to be an act of defiance, David Bohrman, Current’s president, wrote a memo to Mr. Olbermann’s staff telling them that the anchor had long ago given up the opportunity to anchor on election nights. “We assumed,” he wrote, that “Keith had communicated to you.”

“Countdown” was back on the schedule on Wednesday, and Current declined to comment about Mr. Olbermann’s status at the channel. But the struggle for control — which Mr. Olbermann talked about on Twitter — hints at turmoil behind the scenes at Current and highlights how hard it can be to build big media brands around unpredictable personalities.

For both parties, millions of dollars are at stake. Current, which has occupied a lonely position on the cable dial for years, is investing in programming to become a liberal alternative to MSNBC and other cable news channels.

The channel, which is privately held by Mr. Gore and others, is estimated to have made about $115 million in revenue in 2011, according to the research firm SNL Kagan, with a cash flow margin of 22.7 percent. The much bigger MSNBC, a unit of NBCUniversal, is estimated to have made $409 million in revenue with a cash flow margin of 45 percent.

Current is a start-up of sorts, lacking the backing of a deep-pocketed parent company — something Mr. Olbermann hasn’t contended with in years. When the channel put on Iowa caucus coverage without Mr. Olbermann on Tuesday, it was derided by online commenters as cheaply produced; “the production values were only slightly better than local public access,” wrote Jonah Goldberg of the conservative National Review, calling it “hilarious.”

Mr. Olbermann did not directly cite production values as a reason for his absence, but he said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, “I was not given a legitimate opportunity to host under acceptable conditions.”

He deferred an interview request to his manager, Michael Price, who said he expected that Mr. Olbermann would stay at Current. Mr. Price said he was unable to answer other questions because of confidentiality clauses in the anchorman’s contract, which is believed to last five years and be worth $50 million total.

A television heavyweight, Mr. Olbermann joined ESPN 20 years ago — Wednesday happened to be the anniversary of his first day on the job there — and anchored “SportsCenter” for years despite feuds with ESPN executives.

At MSNBC, too, where he spoke out forcefully against the Iraq war, helping to give the channel the liberal identity it now has, he refused to speak to his bosses for long stretches. But he stayed for eight years before departing there with only a moment’s notice last January.

When he was hired by Current shortly thereafter, he was given an equity stake in the company and given the title chief news officer, so he is both a boss and a person who is notoriously resistant to the notion of having a boss. Current seemed aware of the risk; even as the election coverage disagreement became public last week, an executive said, “This is Keith being Keith.”

Other staffers said that Mr. Olbermann, whose “Countdown” started on Current in June, was initially supportive of the channel, but changed his tone toward the end of the year, possibly because of management changes and the technical problems.

On several occasions, satellite feeds have stopped, lights have burned out and graphics packages have failed, embarrassing Mr. Olbermann.

“Countdown” on Current draws a fraction of the one million viewers that Mr. Olbermann attracted on MSNBC. In the fall, to complement the 8 p.m. “Countdown,” Current lined up Cenk Uygur, a former MSNBC anchor, and Jennifer M. Granholm, a former Michigan governor, to anchor shows before and after it. When Mr. Olbermann declined, according to Mr. Bohrman’s memo on Tuesday, to be “the sole anchor and executive producer of our primary and caucus coverage,” they were booked in his place, beginning in December for two post-Republican debate programs. The programs drew minuscule ratings.

When asked if Mr. Olbermann would be on Current next Tuesday, the night of the New Hampshire primary, the channel’s spokeswoman — who has been on the job for just two days — said a special report was scheduled, and added, “We hope that Keith will play a lead role in that coverage.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=e01abedd510076d707f4a0b8501a0a33

Media Decoder: Maddow Agrees to a New Contract With MSNBC

Rachel Maddow in 2008.Rob Bennett for The New York Times
Rachel Maddow, seen here in 2008, the 9 p.m. host on MSNBC.

4:57 p.m. | Updated |
LOS ANGELES– MSNBC said Tuesday that it had signed its top star, Rachel Maddow, to a new multi-year contract, cementing her position at the cable news channel for several years.

The new contract comes a little more than six months after Keith Olbermann hastily departed MSNBC, shaking up the channel’s prime time lineup. Mr. Olbermann, the 8 p.m. host, had been the top draw for viewers; now the top draw is Ms. Maddow, the 9 p.m. host, a protege of Mr. Olbermann who started hosting her show two months before the presidential election in 2008.

Her contract was expected to expire next year; now it will remain in effect well past that point, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which first reported the contract extension. Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, confirmed the contract extension at the Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles.

In an interview here, Ms. Maddow described the new deal as more or less a simple extension of her existing one.

“I’m really, really happy in this job and to have the chance to extend it for a few more years, especially with the year we’re about to have, is a real blessing,” she said. She declined to specify the length of the contract, but said, “This deal was about wanting more years doing what I’ve been doing.”

MSNBC signed a number of prominent contributors to new contracts earlier this year, in part to stave off attempts by Mr. Olbermann to poach them. When Mr. Olbermann brought his MSNBC program, “Countdown,” to Current TV in June, he talked openly about wanting Ms. Maddow to join him there in the future, but her contract extension effectively rules that out.

MSNBC is still sorting out its schedule in the wake of Mr. Olbermann’s exit; at the press tour on Tuesday, Mr. Griffin praised Al Sharpton, who has been hosting the 6 p.m. time slot for a month, but said he had not yet signed up Mr. Sharpton for a permanent position.

The prior 6 p.m. host this year was Cenk Uygur, who was moved out of the time slot and who rejected MSNBC’s offer of a weekend show last month. “I wanted Cenk to stay,” Mr. Griffin said, adding, “I hope one day he comes back. He was terrific. I have nothing bad to say about him.”

The channel is developing other potential progressive-leaning hosts the same way that it developed Ms. Maddow, by having frequent guests fill in as hosts for days or weeks at a time. On Monday, MSNBC said that one of Ms. Maddow’s most frequent substitutes, Christopher Hayes, would start hosting a weekend show in mid-September.

This week MSNBC executives expressed unreserved enthusiasm about another substitute for Ms. Maddow, Melissa Harris-Perry, a professor of political science at Tulane University, who filled in for the first time last week. In an interview Mr. Griffin cited her strong ratings and asked, “How could you not be over the moon about her?”

“She even handled breaking news last week, with the debt-ceiling votes happening,” he said. “She was off prompter, off script, she had people talking in her ear, and she handled it all.”

That kind of reaction is not unlike how MSNBC executives spoke about Ms. Maddow before she was eventually hired as a regular host. Mr. Griffin said, “This reminds me of how it went with Rachel.” But he indicated that he is not ready to sign Ms. Harris-Perry as a full-time host yet.

“Our whole thing is about creating a stable,” he said, adding that the strategy for Ms. Harris-Perry is “to continue to develop her, find places where she can fill in more. Things happen. Who knows?”

If anything, Ms. Maddow was even more impressed by her replacement. “She was awesome,” Ms. Maddow said. “She has been a phenomenal guest and bringing her in as a contributor was exactly the right thing to do. To see her up here and clicking with the teleprompter after like the first date, and to see the audience reaction both anecdotally and quantitatively, I just couldn’t be happier.”

Separately, Mr. Griffin also addressed persistent rumors that CBS could be pursuing MSNBC’s morning team of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski. He said CBS “is going to have to be awfully patient,” because MSNBC has the “Morning Joe” team under contract “for a while.” He would not specify exactly how long that is, but he made it clear it is a matter of years, not months. Nor is MSNBC interested in allowing the team out of that contract, he said, citing the show’s improving ratings.

“I know they’re happy where they are,” Mr. Griffin said.

Also on Tuesday, an MSNBC spokesman confirmed that the channel had reinstated Mark Halperin, a political analyst who was suspended at the end of June for using a derogatory remark to disparage President Obama’s performance at a news conference. He is expected to appear on “Morning Joe” Wednesday.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=fe2744a9ddf79ea9b8567100c5439443