MSNBC's liberal crusader abruptly resigned on air Friday, ending a provocative eight-year run. Howard Kurtz on Olbermann's career highlights and his clashes with network brass.
MSNBC's liberal crusader abruptly resigned on air Friday, ending a provocative eight-year run. Howard Kurtz on Olbermann's career highlights and his clashes with network brass. Plus, watch Olbermann’s signoff below and seven memorable Keith Olbermann videos.
Keith Olbermann, the liberal crusader whose combative style put him increasingly at odds with his network bosses, resigned abruptly from MSNBC Friday.
The cable channel confirmed his unexpected departure as Olbermann was rather calmly announcing the demise of Countdown after an eight-year run that included a bitter feud with Bill O’Reilly, fiery denunciations of Republicans and occasional acknowledgements that he had gone too far.
Olbermann said he had been “told that this is the last edition of your show” and thanked his audience, saying: “My gratitude to you is boundless.” He also thanked a list of people who have worked with him, notably excluding MSNBC President Phil Griffin, whom he has known for three decades.
Olbermann, who quit MSNBC once before—in 1998, ripping his bosses in the process—almost single-handedly revived the network by leading it on a leftward march and aggressively attacking the rival operation he called Fox Noise. But his relations with top NBC and MSNBC executives sharply deteriorated when he was suspended for making donations to Democratic candidates, and they began to talk about how the channel was now on solid enough footing to survive without him.
Officially, the network offered little guidance, saying in a bland statement: “MSNBC thanks Keith for his integral role in MSNBC's success and we wish him well in his future endeavors.” A new host, former Democratic Senate staffer Lawrence O’Donnell, will move his program from 10 p.m. eastern to Olbermann’s 8 p.m. slot, with Ed Schultz moving from 6 p.m. to O’Donnell’s time period.
Olbermann has also gotten involved in several flame wars with little-known critics on Twitter, blocking them from his account.
Olbermann almost single-handedly revived the network by leading it on a leftward march.
But Olbermann’s departure is certain to disappoint legions of fans who viewed him as standing up to the conservative establishment. He long resisted the liberal label, saying he was radicalized by the abuses of the Bush administration and the Iraq War. “I find myself currently aligned, not in the sense of having membership, but being in the same part of the ballpark as a lot of liberals,” he told me in 2006.
The high-level talks came to include Jeffrey Immelt, chief executive of GE; Zucker; Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox’s parent company, and Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes. But every attempt at hammering out a truce broke down.
Numerous staffers at MSBNC believed it was only a matter of time before the prime-time host, who once quit ESPN, would either bolt or be pushed out. If Olbermann concluded that he would no longer have the independence he craved in the more buttoned-down Comcast era, it is unlikely that anyone in the NBC executive suites tried to talk him out of it.