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Keith Olbermann Defends 'Countdown' Ratings, Claims Right Wing Smear Campaign
Keith Olbermann defended his show Thursday against reports that it is in danger of being canceled over declining ratings.
Several recent reports, from outlets including Daily Finance, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Post's Page Six have focused on Olbermann's January demo rating, which dropped 44% from January 2009 (the month of Barack Obama's inauguration).
From Daily Finance:
Ratings for Olbermann's Countdown have been soft recently, and the 8 p.m. shows on CNN and HLN have narrowed the gap. In the important demographic of adults 25 to 54 -- the group advertisers are looking to reach -- Countdown was down 44% year-over-year in January. It averaged 268,000 viewers in that demo, only 3,000 more than Nancy Grace's show on HLN, and 12,000 more than CNN's Campbell Brown. Fox News's O'Reilly Factor dominated the hour with 964,000 viewers age 25 to 54, and was the only cable news show in the time period to increase its audience, by 55%.
Olbermann branded Daily Finance a "right-wing site" after that report — an allegation that was batted down by the writer, Jeff Bercovici — but it was used as the basis for the LAT commentary "Countdown begins for end of Keith Olbermann's 'Countdown'?" and the Page Six item, "Olbermann's sinking ship." Both of those items hinted strongly that Olbermann's run as MSNBC's leading man in primetime may soon come to an end, even though MSNBC president Phil Griffin said in the original ratings post that he is "pleased with where we are" at 8PM.
Thursday night, Olbermann responded to the rumor that his show is in jeopardy on both his show and on Daily Kos.
"The show isn't about to be cancelled," he wrote. "It isn't slumping. MSNBC isn't worried about it. NBC isn't worried about it. It is making them a ---damned fortune, in fact (and they'd owe me a ---damned fortune if they did cancel it, which they aren't going to)."
Olbermann blamed the storyline on a right-wing smear campaign, noting that the New York Post is "Rupert Murdoch's vanity newspaper" and that the Los Angeles Times writer, Andrew Malcolm, was once Laura Bush's press secretary:
It's the route by which the thing got seized by the sleaze blogs like Breitbart and NewsCorp and the like that so beautifully, almost diagrammatically, illustrates how Conservatives come to believe the crazy, nonsensical, totally fact-free things they believe, how they transform discernible, provable lies, into their wishful-thinking version of the truth.
Olbermann also accused Bercovici of cherry-picking his data and described the longtime media writer as "Daily Finance's extremely thin-skinned media writer, always hostile, and snickered at behind his back by his rivals."
Olbermann claimed his ratings actually grew in January, citing month-to-month figures showing that "Countdown" grew 5% over December 2009 (though year-over-year numbers are much more standard than month-to-month).
"And yet the right wing believes that Countdown is about to be cancelled, because it so desperately wants it to be cancelled, that the facts, and the ratings, and the profits, become irrelevant," he wrote. "And it is better for them to pretend they are getting their way, than to acknowledge that they are not."
Is America Getting Over Keith Olbermann?
Keith Olbermann was already a renowned sportscaster when he rose to prominence as a political commentator. This was during the Bush Administration, when the left was badly in need of a forceful voice to rally around. Such was his popularity that MSNBC reoriented its entire primetime lineup around it.
But now the Democrats control Congress and the White House, and there are creeping indications that the world may not have quite as much need of -- or patience for -- Olbermann and his shtick as it once did.
Ratings for Olbermann's Countdown have been soft recently, and the 8 p.m. shows on CNN and HLN have narrowed the gap. In the important demographic of adults 25 to 54 -- the group advertisers are looking to reach -- Countdown was down 44% year-over-year in January. It averaged 268,000 viewers in that demo, only 3,000 more than Nancy Grace's show on HLN, and 12,000 more than CNN's Campbell Brown. Fox News's O'Reilly Factor dominated the hour with 964,000 viewers age 25 to 54, and was the only cable news show in the time period to increase its audience, by 55%.
But there are also more subjective signs that Olbermann's stridency and lack of proportion are alienating some of his natural allies. Quite a few eyebrows elevated last week when Jon Stewart, in a parody of one of Olbermann's "Special Comment" segments, called out the newsman for going way over the top in his denunciations of Republican Senator-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts. The criticism was all the more remarkable, given that Stewart and Olbermann usually take the same side on most issues, especially when it comes to Fox News and the Republicans.
Olbermann's overheated rhetoric also drew a sharp response from Joe Scarborough, MSNBC's house conservative, who called his fellow host's attack on Brown "reckless" and "sad." The exchange (and a few earlier, similar incidents) inspired network president Phil Griffin to issue a stern memo admonishing his charges: "We do not publicly criticize our colleagues. This kind of behavior is unprofessional and will not be tolerated."
Griffin, not surprisingly, says he doesn't believe Olbermann's recent hiccups are part of any larger trend. "Keith has been our tentpole," he says. "I watch the show every night. It's a great show. It's as smart and clever and fun as any out there, and I'm pleased with where we are."
He attributes Olbermann's January ratings slip to a news cycle in which international news, rather than domestic politics, was the No. 1 story. "On big, breaking international news, CNN tends to do better than us. They did a great job in Haiti, and I tip my hat to them," he says. "We're the place for politics, and there are times when politics does great, and there are times when it doesn't." With primaries in the midterm elections already looming, he says, "I think we'll get our momentum back."
As for the flank attack by Stewart, Griffin points out that Olbermann took the comedian's criticism to heart and acknowledged that he had gone overboard in demonizing Brown. "I thought Keith handled that very well," he says. "That's something to be commended, not just piled on."
Anatomy Of A Right Wing Wish
I know many who read this will fall into two neat rows: A) Why, dumb-dumb, do you even pay attention to this?; and B) We don't care, stop whining, go take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile.
But nearly 30 years ago I began to have the singular experience of being written about and found it instantly valuable for any journalist or writer, because you get to watch in real-time as other journalists and writers make mistakes, flub facts, mishear quotes, or, often, deliberately lie, leave out inconvenient facts, or throw the ones they do use completely out of proportion. Only you know the literal truth (if you're lucky), and thus only you can fully measure how goldarned wrong the other guy is. It would make me shudder to think that I might be trampling over as many sweet tulips of accuracy in my own work.
Today, of course, there is the added dimension of political character assassination, which turns the game of mistakes and/or misdirections into three-dimensional Star Trek chess. And this is one of those stories.
Keith Olbermann's Diary:
Forgive me for using a script from tonight's show as a base from which to expand my point. But over the last few days I have watched as a pretty shoddily researched "purpose pitch" of a web piece on my show's ratings has been converted by the rampant right wing bias of the media into actual published reports that the program is facing imminent cancellation.
Let me cut to the chase (since this is besides the point, except insomuch as it contradicts the meme): the show isn't about to be cancelled. It isn't slumping. MSNBC isn't worried about it. NBC isn't worried about it. It is making them a ---damned fortune, in fact (and they'd owe me a ---damned fortune if they did cancel it, which they aren't going to).
It's the route by which the thing got seized by the sleaze blogs like Breitbart and NewsCorp and the like that so beautifully, almost diagrammatically, illustrates how Conservatives come to believe the crazy, nonsensical, totally fact-free things they believe, how they transform discernible, provable lies, into their wishful-thinking version of the truth.
Rupert Murdoch's vanity newspaper, the New York Post, put out one of its typical pieces of crap in its gossip section. I always thought there was a Freudian clue in the fact that "Page Six" is almost never actually printed on the literal page six. But I digress: "Has the countdown begun for the end of 'Countdown'?" Murdoch's minion continued: "even Olbermann's former supporters on the left are tuning out." The Post got this, it writes, from blogs at National Public Radio and the Los Angeles Times, and, quite knee-jerkily, it assumes the reader will be convinced that 100 percent of the content therein is southpaw stuff straight from The Kremlin. It is thus using those organizations as if they are evidence of the supposed 'tune out on the left.'
The NPR blog, it turns out, cites as a source the L.A. Times blog, which it authenticates with the seemingly decisive description "hardly a partisan forum." Except the L.A. Times blog post was written by Andrew Malcolm, a former Press Secretary to Laura Bush, a washed-up political operative, and absolutely the last person on the continent to earn the praise "hardly a partisan." I once had the audacity to call out Mr. Malcolm on one of his most egregious lies, and he has since missed no opportunity to report the slightest glimmer of information that might both cast me in a poor light and not get him or the paper sued. The Times, even in its flush days before the Tribune and the implosion of newspapers set in, was edited with remarkable casualness, and as it manages to snooze away a monopoly in the second largest market in the country, it still is.
Anyway, Mr. Malcolm managed to write a column titled "Countdown begins for the end of Keith Olbermann's Countdown?" which he predicated on the relative ratings last month of my program to CNN, as had been reported in yet another blog from a site called Daily Finance. Daily Finance's extremely thin-skinned media writer, always hostile, and snickered at behind his back by his rivals, had himself cherry-picked the January ratings to report that "the 8 p.m. shows on CNN and HLN have narrowed the gap."
So the New York Post lifted from an NPR blog which lifted from Laura Bush's Ex-Press Secretary's Blog which lifted from Daily-Finance's Blog which left out details that makes the whole meme nonsensical.
Namely: my show's ratings actually grew from December to last month, by five percent at 8 O'Clock and six percent at 10. Grew in a month in which CNN did exceptional, almost continuous coverage from Haiti. Grew to 27 percent ahead of CNN and 24 percent ahead of Headline News. Grew from the end of a year in which MSNBC replaced CNN as the number two rated news network among younger viewers in prime-time. Grew in the past week, too, even as the blog TV Newser reported CNN had dropped in that same demographic to fifth place behind Fox, us, Headline News, and CNBC. One night they were behind The Weather Channel.
And yet the right wing believes that Countdown is about to be cancelled, because it so desperately wants it to be cancelled, that the facts, and the ratings, and the profits, become irrelevant. And it is better for them to pretend they are getting their way, than to acknowledge that they are not.
Sources: MSNBC, Countdown, Huffington Post, Daily Finance, Daily Kos
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