<p>...OK, that's enough. Please resume your lives.</p>
<p>As a lefty, I used to watch Olbermann back in the days when he was the only cable news voice on the left. I thought he was often over the top, but what else was there? </p>
<p>Then MSNBC added the Rachel Maddow show. Rachel never raises her voice, she does her best to present an in-depth view of issues, and she is unfailingly polite to guests on her show even when they are right-wingers who disagree with her. No histrionics or ranting, just commentary and interviews. We know where she stands but she doesn’t feel a need to hammer us over the head with it. </p>
<p>So I cut back on Countdown. </p>
<p>And then MSNBC added Lawrence O’Donnell to their lineup. What? another liberal who can get his points across without shouting or hyperbole? OK… now I’ve got something to watch if I’ve come in late to the Maddow show. </p>
<p>So I completely abandoned watching Olbermann. He was wasting half his air time in a personal vendetta against Bill O’Reilly anyway, which practically speaking meant that he spent half his time re-airing whatever he took issue with from O’Reilly – and if I wanted to watch O’Reilly then I’d flip to Fox News, if I ever figured out where it was. </p>
<p>I’m wondering if I’m the only one, or if perhaps Olbermann’s ratings haven’t been so hot recently.</p>
<p>I give him credit for pulling MSNBC into an identity, and for often using intelligence and humor to get his point across. I hadn’t watched him in a while due to busy schedule, but I will always love “Worst Person in the World”.</p>
<p>Who is Keith Olbermann?</p>
<p>Lest we forget, Keith Olbermann was the first cable commentator to directly take on Bush and Cheney for their mishandling of foreign policy and the economy. He did it in a humorous, engaging way that built a large, stable audience and rescued MSNBC from going down the drain. Keith begat Rachel who begat Ed who begat Lawrence. Let’s also not forget that Keith’s first cable foray was as a sports commentator, and there have been some articles saying that he may be going back to sports, perhaps on Versus. A true patriotic American. He is what Tom Paine once was.</p>
<p>“I’m wondering if I’m the only one, or if perhaps Olbermann’s ratings haven’t been so hot recently.”</p>
<p>His ratings declined in 2010 and he lagged behind Fox News programming.</p>
<p>
I don’t really want to hear Keith Olbermann’s voice when I’m trying to watch a hockey game…</p>
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<p>You don’t want to know.</p>
<p>Re #5 – I agree, he paved the way. But he did it an a very strident manner, which always created credibility issues for me. I didn’t know how to sort out the exaggerations from the facts.</p>
<p>He wasn’t the only one. It’s just that I don’t really like to have to do a lot of fact-checking of my news sources on my own. So I just got tired of listing to him once I had alternatives that seemed more trustworthy in terms of the quality of information presented.</p>
<p>Thursday’s cable news ratings, from [DRUDGE</a> REPORT 2011®](<a href=“http://www.drudgereport.com%5DDRUDGE”>http://www.drudgereport.com)</p>
<p>**CABLE NEWS RACE
THURS. JAN. 20, 2011</p>
<p>FOXNEWS O’REILLY 2,918,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 2,079,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 1,940,000
FOXNEWS SHEP 1,786,000
FOXNEWS BECK 1,780,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 1,460,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 1,106,000
CNN PIERS 1,025,000
MSNBC MADDOW 976,000
MSNBC O’DONNELL 855,000
MSNBC SCHULTZ 760,000
CNN COOPER 740,000
MSNBC HARDBALL 700,000**</p>
<p>Olbie had MSNBC’s top show? That’s like being the heavyweight boxing champion of Sarah Lawrence.</p>
<p>What blows me away is that they are going to move Ed Schultz to prime time. Sorry MSNBC, but all this man does is yell.</p>
<p>Imagine what it must feel like to be CNN? I mean, how dreadful must your product be to get clobbered in the ratings by MSNBC?</p>
<p>American Idol has more viewers than all of these shows combined.</p>
<p>We don’t get cable so we don’t see any of these guys. I don’t think that we’re missing much.</p>
<p>Well, one less biased, hate filled bag of wind gone. Got a couple more left to go.</p>
<p>I don’t know, when someone is so biased and full of it (on either side of the spectrum), it just tends to bore me.</p>
<p>Oh, his career isn’t over…just changing. He apparently got 2 years worth of salary ($14 Mil) and must take at least 6 months off from the idiot box in order not to compete with the rest of MSNBC…the Comcast deal may have had something to do with his departure as well. There are rumors that he is looking to set up a ‘Huffington Post’ kind of presence on the web and off it.</p>
<p>This isn’t the first time his career has made a sudden turn – he started as a loud-sport-jacketed sports commentator with a truly <em>epic</em> moustache! He’s in the prime of life and I have no doubt we will be hearing from him soon.</p>
<p>^you bet. He will come through this with a sweet deal. He wanted out and negotiated a nice parachute. He may even run for office.</p>
<p>He ‘rescued’ msnbc? From what,their ratings are abysmal…He is and always will be a blowhard,didn’t like him on Espn,and disliked him even more on Msnbc…Why is his opinion even meaningful? He was a sports anchor !!!Now he is the liberal left’s main mouthpiece…What are his credentials??? Though I dislike Bill O’Reilly equally as much…Maybe they can combine their ‘talents’ and create a Parker-Spitzer type show on CNN,lol…</p>
<p>He did rescure MSNBC and gave them an identity - a left counter balance to Fox. What commentator on ANY of the cable news networks have a resume that means something. They don’t hire people with legitimate journalism, economics, political or business backgrounds. One of the biggest problems with the cable stations is the fact that they all have huge factual errors but they never admit that and corrections are rare. I used to love watching Keith because he did occassionally admit his errors, and he consistently reported on stories that were being ignored on Fox.
I can’t wait to see what he does next- and I will take him talking about sports over Rush or Dennis Miller any day. At least he is a legitimate sports guy.</p>
<p>“What commentator on ANY of the cable news networks have a resume that means something?”</p>
<p>O’Reilly and Pat Buchanan have pretty plush resumes.</p>