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| Keith Olbermann: Paid $10 Million to Lose Viewers |
| 2011-10-20 |
| Keith Olbermann is not in the witness protection program, but he might as well be. His show on Al Gore's Current TV (America's least watched network) has lost nearly a third of its viewers in four months. Pretty impressive result for $10 million a year. That's just his salary. Countdown with Keith Olbermann was a major draw when it was on MSNBC. On January 21, the network took a big hit when Olbermann announced on air that that would be his last show for them. Then in June, Current launched Olbermann and Countdown. It was no surprise that Olbermann drew a big audience for its early shows - averaging 106,000 viewers a night. Unfortunately, by August it was down to 79,000. Last month's numbers were even worse. Olbermann's average was down to 46,000 viewers and was in no danger of coming close to breaking into the top 30 cable TV news shows. None of the top 30 is all that impressive in terms of audience when judged against non-pundit TV shows. For the third quarter of this year No.1 Bill O'Reilly averaged 2.8 million viewers, while No. 30 - the 12 AM showing of Dr. Drew on HLN - had 435,000. For comparison, Charlie's Angels got 5.9 million viewers last week and a cancellation. To be fair, even at 46,000 Olbermann is still drawing twice what Current was getting before him. Pre-Olbermann, the network was averaging about 23,000 viewers a day in 2010. That means nationwide they had fewer eyeballs than a CW affiliate does in a mid-sized city. (The 2010 numbers are the most recent because Current's audience is so small that Nielsen only tracks them when the network pays it to and even then the numbers aren't given to the public.) This explains why these dismal numbers have Current president David Bohrman so excited about continuing to be in last place. He says the network would be "completely transformed" in the next year with new primetime shows to support Olbermann. (He might want to consider completely transforming it into something besides a TV network.) Al Gore, Current's chairman and co-founder, is also whistling a symphony past this particular graveyard. He told Crain's New York: "We're going to be creating a lot of jobs for people who are not afraid to speak truth to power." We can only hope this isn't the former vice president's solution to the unemployment problem. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #9 Al Gore . . . told Crain's New York: "We're going to be creating a lot of jobs for people who are not afraid to speak truth to power." K, here goes. "You are such a fat douchebag has-been loser, even Tipper Gore couldn't stand you anymore." Do I get the job? |
| Posted by: RandomJD 2011-10-20 14:56 |
| #8 Maybe the OWS campouts are part of the reason his audience numbers have cratered? All of his viewers are busy wandering the strees, looking for co-eds to rape or police cruisers to defecate against? Or, you know, vice versa. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2011-10-20 13:40 |
| #7 "His show on Al Gore's Current TV (America's least watched network) has lost nearly a third of its viewers in four months." Um, the numbers in the story say he went from 106,000 to 46,000...maybe I'm not up to this new math but I seem to remember that 60,000 was more than 1/3 of 106,000. Progressive, lefty, liberal, Democrat math. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2011-10-20 10:56 |
| #6 Olbermann is one of the worst hacks on TV. MSNBC has the rest. Although Anderson Cooper is coming up on the list. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2011-10-20 10:08 |
| #5 "His show on Al Gore's Current TV (America's least watched network) has lost nearly a third of its viewers in four months." So he's gone from 3 viewers to 2? Bummer. |
| Posted by: Barbara 2011-10-20 10:03 |
| #4 Gore's got a ton of money from his buddies that gave him free IPO stock, almost guaranteed to skyrocket. He just "won life's lottery", that he used to criticize others about. He can easily afford lots of parasites working for him. That being said... |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-10-20 09:12 |
| #3 Got you wondering if they too are raiding some charity's piggy bank to keep their life styles. Hollyweird bookkeeping, THE argument for a flat tax code. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2011-10-20 08:53 |
| #2 One word in particular comes to mind right now: Schadenfreude. |
| Posted by: eltoroverde 2011-10-20 08:00 |
| #1 Occupy Wall Street Socialists and Democratic Party approved 1 Percenter. |
| Posted by: Eohippus Phater7165 2011-10-20 06:45 |
