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Edited on Fri Jun-18-04 08:16 AM by scmirage
games in 2004. Shortly thereafter, (in early 2003) he began to fill in for the then ailing Jerry Nachman (who later died). Within a month or so, they negotiated a new contract with Keith to do a prime-time news show which became Countdown, which premiered right around the time that the war in Iraq began. The plan was to still have Keith be the primary anchor for the NBC Cable networks for the Olympic Games (which includes MSNBC, CNBC, USA, and Bravo) up until earlier this month when Keith asked to be replaced because going to Athens would mean being away from Countdown for up to a month, at a time when the show has begun to inch ever-so-slowly up in the ratings (the ratings are still very bad, but at least they are trending upwards).
Apparently, given the time differences between Athens & the U.S. and the logistics of it all would have made it impossible for Olbermann to both host Countdown & the Olympic coverage. So the NBC execs agreed to let him stay in the US with Countdown and replace him with Jim Lampley. I guess the reasoning was that the Olympics were a one-time deal whereas Countdown is a prime-time series for them.
I read a couple of interviews with him right after this was announced, and he admitted he was torn about the decision because he really wanted to do the Olympics but at the end of the day, Countdown was more important. But the plan from the beginning was to have Keith host the Olympic coverage for the NBC cable networks, not to host a primetime news show on MSNBC--that came second.
But some moron from Fox e-mailed Cablenewser.com about the O'Lielly-Keith spat with the following: A cable news insider notes that Keith Olbermann's Countdown averaged only a 0.1 last night, and scratched in the 25-54 demo. He averaged 129,000 viewers -- only 37,000 in the demo. "Jeff Zucker must be proud that his anchor is paving the way for MSNBC to plunge even deeper into obscurity," the insider writes. "At least Dick Ebersol had the common sense to pull this ratings killer from NBC's Olympic coverage."
And that's when Keith contacted the Cablenewser.com website himself and disputed this unnamed Fox insider's claims about him being pulled from the Olympics (see 1st post in thread).
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