Tuned In+News Media | April 4, 2012

Crystal Persuasion: Keith Olbermann, on Letterman, Likens Self to Expensive Chandelier

By James Poniewozik

It made perfect sense for Keith Olbermann to go on Late Show with David Letterman to post-mortem his departure from Current TV. Two talented broadcasters, two very strong-willed guys, two guys who have a history of, shall we say, friction with their employers. So whatever Letterman thinks of how things went down with Olbermann and his latest ex-network, it was a place where the anchor could at least get a sympathetic hearing.

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Tuned In+News Media | March 30, 2012

Olbermann Out, Spitzer In at Current TV

By James Poniewozik

Once Keith Olbermann worked for MSNBC. Then he left amid a feud with his bosses. Then he signed up to remake Current TV’s news operation. Then he got embroiled in a feud with his bosses (despite ostensibly being one of them). Now, eight months and change later, late on a Friday afternoon Current announced that [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | January 5, 2012

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before: Olbermann At Odds With His Network

By James Poniewozik
Jason Kempin / Getty Images

Keith Olbermann is a boss at Current, but that hasn’t stopped him from, once again, getting into a public battle with his own bosses.

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Tuned In+News Media | August 2, 2011

MSNBC Leans Forward Into the Post-Olbermann Era, And Chris Matthews Has a Lot to Say

By James Poniewozik

Keith Olbermann, former MSNBC star / bete noire, did not come up explicitly in the questioning at the MSNBC panel today at the TCA press tour. But his mutually negotiated departure earlier this year was a subtext of many of the questions addressed to news chief Phil Griffin and hosts Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell and [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | June 24, 2011

Dead Tree Alert: From Oprah to Olbermann

By James Poniewozik

My column in the dead-tree issue of TIME out today looks at the return of Countdown with Keith Olbermann, not so much from a review perspective but looking at Olbermann as the latest example of a media star leveraging his or her brand. Oprah launched the OWN channel, Glenn Beck is turning his show into [...]

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Tuned In+TV Ratings | June 22, 2011

Keith Olbermann's First Night Ratings Are Pretty Good, Probably, We Think

By James Poniewozik

The numbers are in for Keith Olbermann‘s first night on Current. You can’t tell a lot from any new show’s first night ratings—ask Jay or Conan—and there is not much direct precedent for a cable-news star moving shop to an almost-unknown network. But for one night anyway, I would bet Olbermann and Al Gore are [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | June 21, 2011

Pardon the Interruption: Keith Olbermann Returns, Swipes at MSNBC

By James Poniewozik

The first thing you notice about Countdown with Keith Olbermann is its similarity to Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Indeed—considering how tough the NBC organization has been with intellectual property with its former late-night hosts–it’s striking how much of the rhetorical office supplies Olbermann was able to walk off with to his new job on Current. [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 11, 2011

Ken Burns and Keith Olbermann, Together Again at Last

By James Poniewozik

Keith Olbermann has announced a roster of regular contributors for his new iteration of Countdown on Current TV, premiering June 20. A lot of political attention will go to voices-from-the-left (and monogram buddies) Michael Moore and Markos Moulitsas, but my attention was captured by another name: Ken Burns, of PBS-documentary fame.

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Tuned In+News Media | April 26, 2011

Current Sets Date for the New/Old Countdown With Keith Olbermann

By James Poniewozik

Current TV, the earnest-but-little-viewed cable channel founded by Al Gore, has announced the new title for its version of Countdown With Keith Olbermann: It will be called Countdown With Keith Olbermann. It launches June 20. If there’s news in the new/old title, I suppose you could interpret it as a signal of purpose for the [...]

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Tuned In+February 9, 2011

Olbermann Gets Company at Current: Docs, Nature, Smoke Jumpers

By James Poniewozik

Today, in a presentation conveniently following Keith Olbermann’s decision to join the network, Current TV announced a slate of new programming for the year 2011. It’s not the new, complementary news-and-views programming that (one assumes) new star and news chief Olbermann will recruit to air along with his primetime show. That will presumably come eventually; [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | February 8, 2011

Keith Olbermann's Current Event: New Show, New Job at Al Gore's Channel

By James Poniewozik

Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann announced this morning that, as of late spring, he will launch a new primetime show and become Chief News Officer at Current TV. [Pause to allow readers to find Current TV in their digital-cable/satellite channel guides.] On a conference call with Current founders former Vice President Al Gore and Joel [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | January 26, 2011

SOTU Roundup; or, What Is Michele Bachmann Looking At?

By James Poniewozik

When CNN announced that it would air not only the official GOP response to the State of the Union address but a live Tea Party response, given by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), I was skeptical. On the one hand, it gave the GOP two responses—a courtesy not afforded to opposition party factions, third parties or [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | January 24, 2011

Is Cable News Going to Get Sorkin-ized?

By James Poniewozik

Keith Olbermann may be out of a job now, but there’s a possibility that he—or a fictional character bearing his likeness—may end up getting the Jedediah Josiah Bartlet, or Mark Zuckerberg, treatment on HBO. Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and likely soon-to-be Oscar nominee for writing The Social Network, has told the BBC [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | January 21, 2011

Keith Olbermann Is Out at MSNBC—Immediately

By James Poniewozik

Talk about a Special Comment: Keith Olbermann announced on air that tonight’s edition of Countdown on MSNBC will be his last—specifically, that he was “told” it would be his last show—a move that was quickly confirmed by the network with a brief announcement: MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended their contract. The last broadcast of [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | November 16, 2010

Olbermann Jousts Koppel in Battle of High Horses

By James Poniewozik

The Germans should have invented a word that’s like “schadenfreude,” but describing the feeling that comes when someone expresses something in a such a way that you feel vaguely uncomfortable agreeing with them. Schaden-noddin’, maybe? Whatever the word, it would roughly describe what I felt last night as Keith Olbermann made some  convincing points in [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | November 11, 2010

Tucker Carlson Generously Proves Jon Stewart Right

By James Poniewozik

Conservative journalist and sometime TV pundit Tucker Carlson is not Keith Olbermann; he just plays him on the Internet. This past summer, Carlson’s website, The Daily Caller, purchased the URL keitholbermann.com and used the domain to host (generally unfavorable) Daily Caller articles about the liberal MSNBC host. Last week, after Keith Olbermann’s suspension from MSNBC [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | November 10, 2010

The Morning After: Olbermann Is Sorry, But Not for That

By James Poniewozik

Keith Olbermann returned to the air after what turned out to be a brief “indeterminate” suspension from MSNBC for violating its policy by making unapproved donations to three political candidates. He had three apologies to his viewers, but not for the donations. Olbermann was sorry, he said, for (1) all the drama; (2) being unaware [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | November 5, 2010

BREAKING: Keith Olbermann Proved Liberal

By James Poniewozik

This just in: MSNBC host Keith Olbermann supports Democrats. According to a report in Politico this morning, Olbermann made the maximum legal donations to three Democratic candidates last month, one of them immediately after he appeared on Olbermann’s show. This is potentially a problem for Olbermann, because it looks as though he violated an NBC [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | November 2, 2010

Sanitized? Olbermann Suspends 'Worst Person' After Rally

By James Poniewozik

After the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear Saturday, Keith Olbermann went on the defensive on Twitter, tweeting that Jon Stewart had “jumped a shark” in behaving as though left and right voices in cable news were equally as guilty for creating a toxic tone in media discourse. (To be fair, Olbermann said it was [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | April 22, 2010

Biting the Hand: When Media Companies Attack (Themselves)

By James Poniewozik

It’s always entertaining when Fox News takes on Fox Entertainment; nothing better captures the exciting contradictions of Rupert Murdoch’s blend of conservative punditry with anything-goes entertainment. First Sarah Palin attacked “Fox Hollywood” for a Family Guy bit about Down Syndrome that mocked her. And now, as Mediaite points out, Bill O’Reilly critiqued Fox hit Glee [...]