Is the End Near for Olbermann?
This article from JedEckert.com is so good, I wanted to put it up as a guest column. Please, post your comments.
Chaos at MSNBC While the Olympics continue in Vancouver, we’re hearing that things continue to fall apart at “The Place for Politics.” Despite having Olympic lead-ins to their prime-time line-up, ratings continue to be abysmal. Keith the Stalker has not been able to get out of his ratings slump for almost a year, and his bizarre personal behavior has begun to worry some NBC execs. Nobody knows when or if he will actually even show up to host his own show for one thing.
Ratings picture is bleak:
Looking at January 2009 compared to January 2010, Keith is down 27% whereas his hated enemy, O’Reilly is up 22%.
In the much vaunted demo (ages 25-52) Keith is down a whopping 47%, O’Reilly is up 53%.
As we noted earlier this week, Keith has a propensity to blame absences on dead or dying parents especially when he doesn’t get his way, and his bosses have long suspected that he was playing the bereaved son card. They could even tolerate the sick father excuse to a point (apparently even when that said father was not be seen at the many Yankee games Keith was attending - one notable game was the October 9 play-off against the Twins!) But now things have really gotten creepy. In his special comment on Wednesday, in what can only be a cry for help or sign of impending mental breakdown, Keith talked about killing his father:
Now, many of us have gone through similar things with our parents, but I bet few would use the ordeal to score political points, and even fewer to use it to play hookey for days on end - especially when his prime seats behind home plate at Yankee Stadium can be seen on TV! It has been reported in the past that Keith would simply refuse to leave his apartment (or even his bathtub) after fighting with management. But this appears to be a new strategy.
Word is that the folks at NBC are now looking for a way out. Very informed sources tell us that they realize all his relationships with employers end badly. It is just a matter of degree. Add to that - his embarrassingly dismal ratings no longer appear to warrant his inflated salary.
On another note, we noticed that some of the more obscure Olympic events were actually playing better on MSNBC than it’s actual programming. On Wednesday, curling, yes curling, bled over into Keith’s hour. When he finally go on the air, viewers fled.
We presume that new tagline will be -MSNBC: “The Place for Curling!”
And even more bad news - we were just taking as look a David Letterman’s ratings for last week. That show tanked with last Thursday’s appearance of The Stalker - with the lowest ratings that week by far. We hope that Dave has learned his lesson.
You may also want to check out “Is Olbermann now a liability for MSNBC?” at Capitol Hill Blue.