But as their relationship with him disintegrated rather publicly over the last six months – to the surprise of absolutely no one in the television business — it became clear that they were getting all of the drawbacks and none of the benefits.
Olberman’s equity stake in Current and high-falutin title of “chief news officer” came with hopes that he would apply the same Midas touch for talent that turned Rachel Maddow into a household name at MSNBC. But, as the path that led to this past week’s decision to simulcast Bill Press’s radio show showed, the only part of Current programming that Olbermann shaped were the minutes between 8 and 9 p.m.
Instead, the one making the imprint was Current president David Bohrman, the veteran producer who brought the magic wall to CNN and the Imus show to MSNBC. The tense relationship between Olbermann and Bohrman was at the heart of the battle between the channel’s top brass and its biggest star over how to create a 24-hour news channel to compete with MSNBC from the left.
Those tense strands finally snapped Friday afternoon, when Gore and Hyatt announced that Current was firing Olbermann because of a lack of “respect” and “collegiality” and replacing him with a show hosted by former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Olbermann quickly fired back that he planned to sue, parting with the shot that “joining them was a sincere and well-intentioned gesture on my part, but in retrospect a foolish one.”
The source of these tensions was subtly apparent every time Current rolled out a new show. From afar, the decision to simulcast Press appeared to fit the script that Current had set for itself when it hired Olbermann. Press had been a guest host for Olbermann on Current, just as Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell had been on MSNBC before going on to anchor primetime on that channel.
But in truth, Olbermann was barely in the picture.
“It was really a Bohrman idea,” said Press, who describes himself as a “fan” of Olbermann and a “friend” of Bohrman. “When he got the job at Current, I got in touch with him and said, ‘Hey, congratulations, maybe we should try something together.’ I was thinking maybe a primetime show, or an afternoon show. What I didn’t know is that David was the one who put Don Imus on MSNBC years ago, when he was head of MSNBC.”
Bohrman was brought in as the channel’s president following the departure of Mark Rosenthal, the executive with whom Olbermann got along well, shortly after Current’s version of “Countdown” launched in June. But Bohrman and Olbermann often clashed, including in disagreements that spilled out into the occasional sarcastic memo inevitably leaked to the New York Times.
When Bohrman was hired in August, Current CEO Joel Hyatt told the New York Times Olbermann “will have a lot of input into programming decisions, particularly as they relate to the shows that lead into and come out of ‘Countdown.’” But it was also Bohrman who picked Cenk Uygur and Jennifer Granholm to host the shows on either side of “Countdown,” along with Stephanie Miller to do a 9 to noon show starting March 26. (Granholm writes a column for POLITICO)
Olbermann’s quotes were conspicuously absent from any of the press releases rolling out the shows, even as Uygur and Granholm went out of their way to say nice things about him in the press.
There was reason for Olbermann to be lacking in enthusiasm about Bohrman’s choices. Uygur’s and Granholm’s shows have nowhere near the production values that “Countdown” does, and since they launched this winter, ratings for “Countdown” have actually been lower than they were before. For the last three months, “Countdown” averaged 139,000 total viewers, according to Nielsen, less than the low-to-date they reached last September of 142,000. The show averaged more than 300,000 total viewers its first week on Current, and at times got more than 1 million total viewers when it was on MSNBC.
Continue ReadingIn 1997, Bohrman created a surprise hit by pointing robotic cameras at the grizzled radio host and doing as little as possible to make “Imus on MSNBC” – Morning Joe’s predecessor – come off like the chirpy, pre-cooked morning shows it was up against. After joining Current, he saw no reason not to do it again.
But just like with those, the idea to put Press’s Washington-based radio show, “Full Court Press: The Bill Press Show,” on television in the morning was pure Bohrman.
“When I was talking to Joel Hyatt and Vice President [Al] Gore about coming over there, clearly one of the things that I wanted to do in the morning was go back to that well and see what the really interesting morning radio programs are,” Bohrman said in an interview ahead of Friday’s Olbermann announcement. “We want this to be a network that’s focused on political content and political talk, and not just another pale imitation of the ‘Today’ show, which is what everyone else on cable, other than MSNBC, is doing right now.”
The shift in the relationship between Olbermann and Current executives was perhaps best illuminated by the different reception Press got the first time he pitched himself to Current.
Shortly after Olbermann was hired, Press met with Rosenthal in New York to signal his interest in being part of whatever programming the channel planned to do around its new star.
“His response was, ‘Thanks for coming, but you’re wrong. We’re not going to do it. That’s it. It’s going to be Keith Olbermann, he’s our political show, and that’s it,’” Press said. “And I said, ‘Surely you are going to have somebody before him and somebody after him.’ And he said ‘No, as far as I’m concerned, he’s our political show, and that’s all we need.’ I was so appalled. And so, he didn’t last long.”
Rosenthal declined to comment.
But several sources familiar with Rosenthal’s tenure describe him as wanting to build out primetime around Olbermann, but wanting to be selective about who was chosen to do it.
For example, Olbermann was vocal in the beginning about wanting to steal Maddow away from MSNBC – vocal enough that MSNBC quickly reupped her contract.
Bohrman, by contrast, started building out the channel’s live schedule relatively quickly, boosting the live hours from one to nine hours in a little over half a year.
It has been a heavy lift, particularly for a channel with no previous experience producing live television, and the technical problems have famously fueled Olbermann’s displeasure.
Although the most obvious evidence of that displeasure – Olbermann’s absence during some of the early primary coverage – had mostly passed, the technical problems hadn’t. Earlier this month, the show cut to a commercial in the middle of Olbermann conducting an interview. Previously, the lights have gone out on set multiple times.
The technical issues are compounded by the fact that Current now produces its five shows out of four different cities: Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Current does not have have a rich corporate parent like MSNBC does, so money is much tighter, and the need for maximizing studio space is greater. When “Countdown” started, it was being produced “out of a 20-year-old truck on the street,” Bohrman himself noted. Despite the move to control room production, there was dissatisfaction that more was not invested in the New York studios.
Bohrman acknowledges that there have been challenges, but brushes aside the emphasis that’s been placed on them, calling the technical issues “minor” and “no different than anywhere else.”
“Show me a television network that hasn’t had technical issues,” he said. “Yes, Keith had a light blow. It’s television. People deal with it every single day.”
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