Keith Olbermann

Keith Olbermann
Keith Olbermann, 2008-01-07
Born	(1959-01-27) January 27, 1959 New York City, New York
Title	News Anchor, Commentator, and Sportscaster
Website	http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/

Keith Olbermann (born January 27, 1959) is an American news anchor, commentator, and radio sportscaster. He currently hosts Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, an hour-long nightly liberal view show of five selected stories with commentary by Olbermann and guests. Starting with the 2007 NFL season, Olbermann also serves as co-host of NBC's Football Night in America with Bob Costas.

Early life and career

Originally from New York City, Olbermann grew up in Westchester County, attending school at Hastings-on-Hudson. Keith Olbermann is of German ancestry. As a teenager, he often wrote about baseball card collecting, appearing in many sports card collecting periodicals of the mid-1970s. He is credited in Sports Collectors Bible, a 1975 book by Bert Randolph Sugar, which is considered one of the important early books for trading card collectors.

Olbermann graduated from the Hackley School in Tarrytown two years after future ESPN broadcaster Chris Berman. He began his broadcasting career while still in high school as a play-by-play announcer for WHTR. Olbermann started college at the age of 16 and in 1979 he earned his bachelor of science degree in communications arts from Cornell University, where he served as sports director for WVBR, a student-run commercial radio station in Ithaca.

Olbermann began his professional career at UPI and RKO Radio before joining then nascent CNN in 1981. In 1984, he briefly worked as a sports anchor at WCVB-TV in Boston, before heading to Los Angeles to work at KTLA and KCBS. His work there earned him 11 Golden Mike Awards, and he was named Best Sportscaster by the California Associated Press three times.

Career at ESPN

In 1992, he joined ESPN’s SportsCenter, a position he held until 1997. He often co-hosted SportsCenter with Dan Patrick, the two becoming a popular anchor team. In 1995, Olbermann won a Cable ACE award for Best Sportscaster. Olbermann would later co-author a book with Patrick called The Big Show about their experiences working at SportsCenter. On the May 10, 2004, episode for Countdown, Olbermann said that the short-lived ABC dramedy Sports Night was based on his time on SportsCenter with Patrick.

Leaving ESPN

In 1997, Olbermann abruptly left ESPN under a cloud of controversy, apparently burning his bridges with the network's management. This began a long and drawn out feud between Olbermann and ESPN. Between 1997 and 2007 incidents between the two sides included Olbermann publishing an essay on Salon.com in November of 2002 entitled "Mea Culpa" in which he stated "I couldn't handle the pressure of working in daily long-form television, and what was worse, I didn't know I couldn't handle it." The essay told of an instance of where his former bosses remarked he had "too much backbone," a claim that is literally true, as Olbermann has six lumbar vertebrae instead of the normal five. In 2004, ESPN famously snubbed him from the guest lineup of its 25th Anniversary SportsCenter "Reunion Week," which saw Craig Kilborn and Charley Steiner return to the SportsCenter set. In 2007, ten years after Olbermann's departure, in an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, he said "If you burn a bridge, you can possibly build a new bridge, but if there's no river any more, that's a lot of trouble." During the same interview, Olbermann stated that he recently learned that as a result of ESPN agreeing to let him back on the airwaves, he was banned from ESPN's main Bristol, Connecticut campus.

Return to ESPN

Olbermann co-hosted an hour of the syndicated Dan Patrick Show on ESPN radio from 2005 until Patrick left ESPN on August 17, 2007. Olbermann and Patrick referred to this segment as "The Big Show," just as their SportsCenter show was known. Patrick often introduced Olbermann with the tagline "saving the democracy," a nod to his work on Countdown.

Other sports broadcasting

Fox Sports

In 1998, Olbermann joined Fox Sports Net as anchor and executive producer for The Keith Olbermann Evening News, a sportscast similar to SportsCenter, airing weekly on Sunday evenings. While at Fox, he again hosted the 2000 World Series as well as Fox Broadcasting's baseball Game of the Week.

According to Olbermann, he was fired from Fox in 2001 after reporting on rumors that Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corporation owns Fox, was planning on selling the Los Angeles Dodgers. When asked about Olbermann, Murdoch said "I fired him...He's crazy." News Corp. sold the Dodgers to Frank McCourt in 2004.

ABC Radio

After Olbermann left Fox Sports in 2001, he provided twice-daily sports commentary on the ABC Radio Network, reviving the "Speaking of Sports" and "Speaking of Everything" segments begun by Howard Cosell.

NFL on NBC

Olbermann was named on April 16, 2007 as co-host of Football Night in America, NBC's NFL pre-game show that precedes their Sunday Night NFL game.

Career at NBC Universal

First NBC stint

In 1997, Olbermann left ESPN to host his own primetime show on MSNBC, The Big Show with Keith Olbermann. The news-variety program covered three or four topics in a one-hour broadcast. Olbermann also occasionally hosted the weekend edition of NBC Nightly News, and, along with Hannah Storm, co-hosted NBC Sports’ pre-game coverage of the 1997 World Series.

See also: Major League Baseball on NBC

When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke in 1998, the show morphed into White House in Crisis. Olbermann became frustrated as his show was consumed by the Lewinsky story. In 1998, he stated that his work at MSNBC would "make me ashamed, make me depressed, make me cry."

Return to MSNBC on Countdown

Main article: Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Olbermann returned to MSNBC in 2003 as a substitute host on Nachman and as an anchor for the network's coverage of the war in Iraq. Prior to his return, Olbermann was a regular contributor to CNN and provided twice-daily commentary, “Speaking of Sports,” for ABC Radio Network. His own show, Countdown, debuted shortly thereafter on March 31, 2003, in the 8 p.m. ET time slot previously held by programs hosted by Phil Donahue and, briefly, Lester Holt. On October 13, 2004, Olbermann launched Bloggermann, his Countdown weblog, hosted on MSNBC.com. Olbermann used the open format of the blog to expand on facts or ideas alluded to in the broadcast, to offer personal musings and reactions, and to break news at odd hours. However, in February 2007, Olbermann launched a new blog, The News Hole.

Countdown's format, per its name, involves Olbermann ranking the five biggest news stories of the day or sometimes "stories my producers force me to cover" as Olbermann puts it. This is done in numerical reversal or counting down with the first story shown being ranked fifth but apparently the most important. The segments ranked numbers two and one typically are of a lighter fare than segments ranked five through three. The first few stories shown are typically oriented toward government, politics, and world events. The last two typically involve celebrities, sports, or the bizarre.

Countdown posted a 77 percent gain in total viewers (52 percent in viewers aged 25 to 54) for the first quarter of 2007 over the first quarter of 2006 in the 8pm timeslot, Bill O'Reilly's gains during that period were 5 percent, Nancy Grace's 12 percent, and Paula Zahn's suffered a loss of 10 percent. In the age 25-54 demographic, O'Reilly had 507,000 viewers versus Olbermann's 250,000, and O'Reilly's overall viewer pool was larger than Olbermann's (2.2 million viewers a night this year versus Olbermann's 710,000 viewers).

On February 16, 2007, MSNBC reported that Olbermann had signed a four-year extension on his contract with MSNBC for Countdown, as well as the inclusion of another show set to air on NBC in the fall. The details of the show have not been fully disclosed, but Olbermann was quoted on air as saying it will deal with commentary segments similar to his "special comments", but not so politically oriented. He has referred to them as "essays."

In a technique similar to that of former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite in connection to the Vietnam War, Olbermann counts the days since May 1, 2003, the day President George W. Bush declared "mission accomplished" in Iraq. He then ends the broadcast by crumpling up his notes and throwing them at the camera, saying his signature close, "Good night and good luck" in the mode of another former CBS newsman, Edward R. Murrow.

Claims of ideological bias

Although it began as a traditional newscast, Countdown With Keith Olbermann has gradually adopted an opinion-oriented format. The show frequently features criticism of prominent Republicans and rightward leaning figures, especially the George W. Bush Administration, and of rival news commentator Bill O'Reilly, whom Olbermann routinely dubs the “Worst Person In The World."

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz has written that Olbermann is "position[ing] his program as an increasingly liberal alternative to The O'Reilly Factor." The conservative media watchdog group Media Research Center (MRC) has accused Olbermann of liberal bias. The MRC compiled a list of the recipients of Olbermann's “World's Worst” for about a year from its beginning on June 30, 2005 and reported that, of the approximately 600 recipients, 174 (29 percent) of those fit their definition of “conservative” people or ideas while only 23 (4 percent) were what they considered “liberal.” Olbermann has frequently chastised presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, sometimes described as a "progressive" Democrat, for her campaign tactics in recent months against her opponent, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL). However, this chastisement seems to have been occasioned by what Olbermann sees as a rightward turn in her campaign (see Criticism of the Hillary Clinton campaign below).

In a Countdown interview with Al Franken on October 25, 2005, Olbermann noted that in 2003, after having Janeane Garofalo and Franken on his show, a vice president of MSNBC had questioned him on inviting "liberals" on consecutive nights; contrasting that occurrence to the apparent ideological latitude he enjoyed at the time of the second Franken interview.

In November 2007, conservative British newspaper The Daily Telegraph placed Keith Olbermann at #67 on their Top 100 list of most influential US liberals. It said that he uses his MSNBC show to promote, "an increasingly strident liberal agenda." It added that he would be, "a force on the Left for some time to come." Investigative journalist Robert Parry has characterized Olbermann as being on the "left side of the scale."

Olbermann has refused to "pigeonhole" himself politically, stating, "I'm a liberal, I'm not an American."

Criticism of the Bush administration

In Olbermann's "Special Comment" segment on July 3, 2007, he called President George W Bush's commutation of Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence the "last straw," and called for the resignation of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Olbermann said:

We enveloped our President in 2001. And those who did not believe he should have been elected — indeed, those who did not believe he had been elected — willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship. And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it.

On his February 14, 2008 "Special Comments" segment, Olbermann castigated Bush for threatening to veto an extension of the Protect America Act unless it provided full immunity from lawsuits to telecom companies. Olbermann stated,

Mr. Bush, you say that our ability to track terrorist threats will be weakened and our citizens will be in greater danger, yet you have weakened that ability, you have subjected us, your citizens, to that greater danger. This, Mr. Bush, is simple enough even for you to understand. For the moment, at least, thanks to some true patriots in the House, and to your own stubbornness, you have tabled telecom immunity, and the FISA act. You. By your own terms and your definitions, you have just sided with the terrorists. You got to have this law, or we‘re all going to die. But, practically speaking, you vetoed this law.

During the same commentary, Olbermann stated: "If you believe in the seamless mutuality of government and big business, come out and say it. There is a dictionary definition, one word that describes that toxic blend. You‘re a fascist—get them to print you a T-shirt with 'fascist' on it. What else is this but fascism?".

Feud with Bill O'Reilly

Olbermann has repeatedly named Bill O'Reilly, host of the The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel as his “Worst Person in the World," naming him more than 60 times from June 2005 to August 2007.

The feud blossomed with Olbermann's public celebration of O'Reilly's 2004 sexual harassment suit by former Fox News Channel producer Andrea Mackris; he jokingly kept track of money his viewers pledged to buy the tapes from Mackris and ran a “Save the Tapes” campaign.

Olbermann went (on August 30, September 5, September 11, and November 1 of 2006 commentaries) from criticizing O'Reilly to confronting the Bush administration directly. In a September 2006 “Worst Person in the World” segment, Olbermann said, “I'm sorry, Bill. I can't play with you right now. I have bigger fish to fry.”

According to The New York Times, O'Reilly eventually stopped criticizing Olbermann on The O'Reilly Factor, but Fox News spokeswoman Irina Briganti has released the following public statement in response:

Because of his personal demons, Keith has imploded everywhere he’s worked, from lashing out at co-workers to personally attacking Bill O’Reilly and all things Fox, it’s obvious Keith is a train wreck waiting to happen. And like all train wrecks, people might tune in out of morbid curiosity, but they eventually tune out, as evidenced by Keith’s recent ratings decline. In the meantime, we hope he enjoys his paranoid view from the bottom of the ratings ladder and wish him well on his inevitable trip to oblivion.

A press release by NBC on May 1, 2007 indicates that ratings for Countdown went up significantly since Fox’s 2006 statement.

Countdown with Keith Olbermann" (8:00 to 9:00 pm ET) continues its ratings surge, up +81% in total viewers (818,000 v. 452,000) and +73% in the demo (292,000 v. 169,000) over a year ago. "Countdown" maintained its lead over CNN, with a +9% advantage in total viewers and a +7% advantage in the demo. CNN delivered 749,000 total viewers and 273,000 in the demo for the month.”

While attending a Television Critics Association breakfast session on 22 July 2006, Olbermann was photographed holding up "an O’Reilly mask while raising his right arm in what resembled a Nazi salute." The next week, while a guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Olbermann was asked to comment on the photo, which had appeared on the Drudge Report. Olbermann said he had been waving to a friend, though he added that "Bill O'Reilly has defended the Nazis from World War II on three separate occasions." Olbermann's comments referred to an episode of The O'Reilly Factor, in which O'Reilly inaccurately stated that American troops were the aggressors in the Malmedy massacre.

On 28 July 2006, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sent an open letter to Olbermann at MSNBC stating, "We are deeply dismayed by your ongoing use of the Nazi 'Sieg Heil' salute, both on your program and in public appearances…" The letter explains that Olbermann's use of the salute prompted many complaints from its members, including Holocaust survivors, and that any use of it "serves to trivialize the Holocaust and the six million Jews and others who died as a result of Hitler's Final Solution." The letter closed by asking Olbermann to "reconsider [his] use of the Nazi salute in the future."

Olbermann had written a year earlier in his weblog that Nazi references have "no place...in this culture" and "the analogies are wrong, offensive, and deeply hurtful" when used in partisan politics.

On the 6 December 2007 Countdown, Olbermann gave O'Reilly the bronze during The Worst Person in the World segment for telling Dana Perino, "you know, I've never understood why you, Tony Snow, McClelland, and White House spokespeople and President Bush himself, the president himself, don't get as angry as I get from the 'Bush lied crowd'. They can't prove any lies. They say it over and over and over. Somebody accused me of being a liar like Biden just did, I'd be all over them. I'd be all over them." Olbermann challenged O'Reilly, "Okay. You're a liar. Come get me, tough guy."

Criticism of the Hillary Clinton campaign

On 12 March 2008, Olbermann used his "Special Comment" on Countdown to criticize the direction and management of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Olbermann said Sen. Clinton is "campaigning as if Barack Obama were the Democrat and [she] were the Republican", and pled with Senator Clinton to "take back the reins of the campaign from whoever has led you to this precipice".

In a May 2, 2008 "diary" entry in the Daily Kos political blog Olbermann berated the Clinton Campaign for Hillary Clinton's interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly even after Barack Obama appeared on Fox News Sunday three days prior.

Again, on May 23, 2008, Olbermann made Senator Clinton the subject of a "Special Comment," for a remark that she made on the same day. He strongly criticized the senator's reference to Robert F. Kennedy's June 4, 1968 assassination which she made as part of a rationale for continuing her "second place" presidential campaign into June. Olbermann called Clinton's conduct "unforgivable."

Other news journalism

Olbermann was a fill-in for newscaster Paul Harvey. The September 11, 2001 attacks provided the impetus for Olbermann to return to full-fledged news reporting. He won an Edward R. Murrow Award for reporting from the site of the attacks for 40 days on ABC Radio and Los Angeles radio station KFWB. Olbermann wrote a weekly column for Salon.com from July 2002 until early 2003.

Baseball historian and fan

Olbermann is a dedicated baseball fan and historian of the sport, with membership in the Society for American Baseball Research. He is also one of the most prominent baseball card collectors in the country, particularly of T-206 tobacco cards and other rare cards, such as the very rare 2006 Alex Gordon rookie card. He argues that New York Giants baseball player Fred Merkle should not be denied inclusion into the Baseball Hall of Fame because of a baserunning mistake." He contributed the foreword to More Than Merkle (ISBN 0-8032-1056-6), a book requesting amnesty for Merkle's error, also known as the "Merkle Boner." Olbermann was also one of the founders of the first experts' fantasy baseball league. He was one of the founders of the USA Today Baseball Weekly LABR league, giving the league its nickname (LABR stands for League of Alternative Baseball Reality). Because of his extensive baseball knowledge, Olbermann is a consultant to Topps, the baseball card manufacturer. Topps allowed him to open the first pack of 2007 baseball cards on Countdown the week before they hit stores. The first card of the pack was Johnny Damon of the New York Yankees.

Anti-smoking

On Monday, August 8, 2005, the day following Peter Jennings’ death from lung cancer, Olbermann revealed on-air that he had a benign fibrous tumor removed from his palate just 10 days earlier. In an explicit monologue (in which he described, among other things, his experience spitting blood into a trash can), he attributed his tumor directly to his 27-year habit of smoking pipes and cigars. He vigorously urged his viewers not to wait until they see symptoms to quit. "Do whatever you have to do to stop smoking — now. While it's easier."

This marked the beginning of "I Quit," once a recurring segment on Countdown which offered anti-smoking tips and encouragement. On August 16, 2005, Olbermann's NBC colleague Mike Taibbi joined him for "I Quit" to discuss kicking the habit.

Other television appearances

• He appeared in a cameo as himself in an episode of NBC's Surface.
• He appeared in a series of television commercials for the Boston Market restaurant chain in 1997, in which he tells a bunch of Calvin-Klein type models to "eat something."

• He briefly appeared in an episode of Arli$$ as himself. During his appearance he was working at Fox Sports.

• A self-described fan of the Fox animated television sitcom Family Guy, he announced in June 2006 on the Dan Patrick Show that he had recorded some voice tracks to be used in an upcoming episode of the series. ("It Takes a Village Idiot, and I Married One", featuring Olbermann as a character named Bob Grossbeard, aired on May 13, 2007.) Also, Seth MacFarlane (creator of the animated Family Guy series) guested on Countdown on January 19, 2007 to discuss Stephen Colbert's appearance on The O'Reilly Factor and O'Reilly's subsequent appearance on The Colbert Report. Olbermann had previously appeared on The Colbert Report himself (March 14, 2006), and discussed his disputes with O'Reilly.

• Olbermann has lent his voice for The Simpsons 2007-2008 season episode "Funeral for a Fiend." The episode featured Sideshow Bob whom Olbermann had previously compared to Bill O'Reilly.

• On October 3, 2006, Olbermann appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman.

• Olbermann appears, with Dan Patrick, in the opening segment of the Hootie & the Blowfish music video "Only Wanna Be With You".

• On February 23, 2007, he appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

• On February 25, 2007, he was featured in the "Cable Guy" segment on CBS Sunday Morning.

• On June 27, 2007, Olbermann and Patrick appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman.

• On the HBO series Big Love, Olbermann appeared in Season 2, Episode 9 ("Swing Vote Margene") as himself during a fictitious newscast.

• On April 24, 2008, Olbermann appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman.

Bibliography

• Truth and Consequences: Special Comments on the Bush Administration's War on American Values (Random House, December 2007). ISBN 978-1-4000-6676-6.
• The Worst Person In the World and 202 Strong Contenders (Wiley, September 2006). ISBN 0-470-04495-0.
• The Big Show: Inside ESPN's Sportscenter (Atria, 1997). ISBN 0-671-00918-4.
• The Major League Coaches: 1921-1973 (Card Memorabilia Associates, 1973).

External links

• Countdown with Keith Olbermann Front Page
• Keith Olbermann's blog on The Daily Kos
• Stories on Olbermann from Media Matters for America
• Stories on Olbermann from Media Research Center's Newsbusters