March 23, 2023 • 41 mins
EPISODE 160: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Stormy Daniels Grand Jury reconvenes at mid-day Thursday amid a reporting consensus that one last witness will be heard, to rebut the pro-Trump attorney Robert Costello who appeared Monday. But nobody is certain if that will be a Michael Cohen redux or an entirely new witness (CNN even threw out the name Stormy Daniels). So far Costello's main contributions have been the standard Trump hyperbole about "600 pages of evidence the DA has hidden" (almost none of which seems to have any relevance to the Daniels payoff) and one of the great malapropisms of the Trump era. Costello insists he "threw a wrench into their monkey works" - which isn't a thing.
The Grand Jury is not expected to do anything but hear testimony so an indictment would seem to shift to next week. But so far everything that seemed logical has proved not to be the case.
Happily, the Special Counsel's push to erase Attorney-Client privilege for Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran seems to be clarifying nicely. Trump lost his appeal, seems out of position to go further up the food chain. which means that Corcoran will have to answer six lines of questioning, all of which mainlines back to whether Trump knew that the "certification document" Corcoran wrote and Christina Bobb signed last spring was going to falsely declare that Trump had returned all the Classified Documents he stole. THIS prosecution remains on course and on schedule - unless somebody throws... a monkey into the wrench works.
B-Block (15:23) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Ted Cruz and the others who insisted DirecTV was censoring NewsMax when it was actually about money, now STILL insist it was censorship even after a dollar compromise has been reached. MSNBC follows CNN in a sudden lurch to the right as Ari Melber stands up for absolutely nothing and "welcomes" John Kasich as a paid contributor. And the Michigan GOP gets a new "Possession can be transmitted by Sex With Demons" chair and a month later they're tweeting memes of the wedding rings of thousands of Holocaust victims. (21:27) IN SPORTS: Sports Illustrated declares that local sportscasters - once gods in human form - are now dead. Not only did I used to be one of them but I wrote a piece predicting this day...in 1992!
C-Block (34:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Speaking of local sportscasting: the greatest scoop I ever got while doing it was one where my only real effort was answering the phone from tipsters half a dozen times. The tale of breaking the Wayne Gretzky Trade.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. And
we're back to counting how many angels are dancing on
(00:25):
the head of one particular pin. We're better still, how
many of Stormy Daniels wrenches are dancing inside the monkey works.
NBC reports the Stormy Daniels grand Jury is back in
the saddle today in New York. First, CNN said it
was on standby, then they switched to its back about
eight thirty last night. Both networks hint at additional witness testimony.
(00:49):
Politico says it's an old witness coming back to rebut
a new witness, which would be Michael Cohen. CNN says
it could be a new witness and even floated the
name of Stormy Daniels and says the delay has been
DA Alvin Bragg and his prosecutors trying to decide if
the best rebuttal of the new witnesses from the old
witness Cohen or the new witness to be announced. The
(01:11):
right wing blogosphere is quoting a Fox analyst saying the
DA hid six hundred pages of exculpatory evidence, or is
it six thousand or is it sixty thousand, but not
one Fox story makes the slightest reference to this nor
to its own supposed analyst. Nobody, but nobody thinks there'd
(01:32):
actually be an indictment today, which means, given how this
story has been going for the last week, it is
time for Captain Reynaud to say, round up the usual suspects.
The only participant in all of this to go on
the record is a Trump lawyer, and one with a
terrible reputation, and he testified Monday in order to try
to impeach the witness, Michael Cohen. And he says he
(01:55):
quote through a wrench in their monkey works, which would
be a great headline, except, of course it's through a
monkey wrench into the works, because there's no such thing
as monkey works. Then there appeared a twenty eighteen letter
in which Cohen lied to the Feds that he made
(02:17):
the payment to Stormy Daniels, and the Trump apologist all said, aha,
and everybody else said, we already knew Cohen lied to
the Feds about that payment. That's why he went to jail.
But even that claim of throwing a wrench in their
monkey works by the Trump mouthpiece Robert Costello does not
add up, because if Costello really did damage Cohen on Monday.
(02:40):
Cohen was at the courthouse Monday waiting to be called
back in, and he wasn't, and he wasn't Tuesday, and
he wasn't yesterday. If your head already hurts, that's Trump's plan.
That has been Trump's plan since the nineteen seventies. Whenever
he has been in trouble, whether it is presidential trouble
(03:03):
or indictment trouble or football trouble, he has flooded the
zone with them feces. This is why he has eleventy
billion different lawyers. If one tells the truth and that
truth gets Trump in trouble, Trump just as a new lawyer,
betray the old lawyer and blame the old lawyer if
the story is too easy to follow. Trump had Michael
(03:25):
Cohen pay a porn star to keep quiet about an
affair so it wouldn't come out before the election. And
that's a bribe and an illegal business records felony, and
an illegal campaign contribution. Trump makes sure he throws different
attorneys and different spokespeople and different right wing media sycophants
to attack each part of the story separately, so quickly,
(03:48):
so loudly, and so voluinously that you no longer have
any idea what anybody is talking about. And if you
like to think meta here, if Trump was really convinced
that the stormy Daniel's case would not lead to him
being indicted and arrested, the biggest scam he could ever
pull would be too dramatically announced that he was about
(04:11):
to be arrested, because he could raise a lot of
campaign money off of the outrage. And then when it
didn't happen, when he wasn't arrested, he could claim he
stopped them from arresting him, or his supporters stopped them
from arresting him, or the fundraising stopped them from arresting him,
or Gods stopped them from arresting him. Then he could
(04:33):
make sure a long sympathetic and easily led newspaper person
like just to pick a name, Magga Haberman could find
out that Trump is sitting at Marilago saying that a
purp walk with cameras and reporters could be fun, and
obviously she'd write that, and then he'd look brave and
valiant and defiant in him martyr, because he's not just
(04:55):
willing to face the proverbial firing squad, but he's willing
to face it without a blindfold unless he really is arrested,
and then he's got a different problem because he comes
out of that one one of two ways, like I
suggested yesterday, Suddenly he's Glorious Swanson playing Norma Desmond right
after she murders the guy in Sunset Boulevard, and she
(05:16):
thinks she's making her movie come back and she's a star,
when in fact it is a purp walk and she's nuts.
And at the opposite end of that spectrum, Trump could
be in trouble boasting about how much fun a purp
walk would be when the DA's office has already said
there will not be a purp walk, and then they
arrest Trump, and to get the effect Trump has already promised,
(05:37):
he would have to walk out in front of the
cameras voluntarily holding his hands tightly behind his back, as
if he'd been handcuffed like a mime. Happily, As the
Stormy Daniel's case gets cloudier, the Marilago documents case keeps
getting clear. ABC first reported Tuesday night that the judge
(06:00):
called Trump's assertions last May that he had given all
the him It's back part of a quote, criminal scheme,
and she said that the Special Counsel Jack Smith had
shown quote prima facie evidence showing that the former president
had committed criminal violations. ABC also reported that the stuff
Trump lawyer Evan Corkrane now had to turn over to
(06:22):
Smith included transcripts of quote, private audio which appeared to
be recordings Corkrane made of Trump. Then came the bizarre
overnight appeal process by Trump to block the waiver of
attorney client privilege with Corkrane, which turned out against Trump
and which will apparently not be taken to a higher court.
Though this is Trump, and if he ever stopped paying
(06:47):
lawyers to do useless things for him, thousands of attorneys
would almost instantly starve on the streets within hours, and
the world economy would collapse. Now ABC has more informed
reporting that there are six topics about which Evan Corkran
has been ordered to give his testimony to the Special
Counsel Smith. One was Trump or anybody working for Trump
(07:11):
aware of this certification document that's at the center of
the thing, the document that Corkoran wrote and had Christina
Bob sign, which they then turned over the Department of Justice.
After what the document falsely says, was Trump voluntarily turning
over any remaining documents he still held at Marilago last spring?
Whoever signed that maybe guilty of perjury. Whoever wrote it
(07:34):
may be guilty of perjury. Whoever ordered it may be
guilty of subordination of perjury. Topic number two. Smith wants
Corkran to answer specifically, did Trump approve the claim in
that document that there had been a quote diligent search
and did Trump approve of the certification then being given
to the government. Number three. Corcoran also has to testify
(07:58):
about what steps he took to determine where the classified
documents were at Marilago and why he thought they were
all in the storage room. This all goes back to
the idea of did you just take Trump's word for it?
And did Trump tell you just to take his word
for it. Four. Corkran has to explain why they made
Christina Bob the fall Gal the designated custodian of all
(08:22):
the documents Trump held as an aside. I'm betting the
answer is nobody likes her. Five. Corkran has to explain
if he talked to Bob about this, and if so,
what did they say the custodian part, not the nobody
likes her part. And six and this all goes back
(08:42):
to the idea that Trump knew what he was doing
when a document that lied and said, all those classified documents,
I've turned them all over again. Here the signatures of
a couple of lawyers that Trump knew that in advance
and knew it was a lie in advance. It goes
to four knowledge of a crime and elevates the whole
thing monumentally. That's sixth one. There was a phone call
(09:05):
between Corkran and Trump on June twenty fourth, the same
day that the grand jury subpoena demanding Trump turn over
the surveillance footage of the Marilago storage room, which the
Department of Justice believed would show people moving boxes in
and out of it. The same day that subpoena showed
up at Marilago. This is a no brainer. Smith gets
(09:27):
to ask Corkran specifics about his call with Trump that day,
just happening to be the same day as the subpoena arrived.
Plus Smith gets all the documents and that tantalizing transcript
Corcoran has, which we already knew. So there it is
in the courtrooms of New York and Washington. Clear as
(09:49):
a bell. We know exactly what's going to happen from
here on in, unless somebody else throws a monkey wrench
into the works, or we're a wrench into the into
the monkey works, or the wait, unless somebody throws a
monkey into the wrench works. He's this year minky a
(10:28):
monkey into the wrench works, still ahead of us in
this edition of Countdown. For seven months, I've been telling
you how new management, namely the paste eating guy, has
been pushing CNN to the right under the guise of balance.
Now looks like it started at MSNBC, which has just
hired a former Republican governor and made one of its
(10:49):
hosts welcome him like anybody watching MSNBC wanted to see
a Republican governor, and the host stood up to this perversion,
like like somebody who really likes that NBC money. You
know what happens when you elect a new chair of
your state Republican party and you select the woman who
believes abortion is just to cover up of satanic child
(11:11):
sacrifice and that demonic possession can be transmissible by sex
with demons. Well, what happens is you get tweets over
your party's name comparing gun control to the Holocaust, complete
with pictures of the wedding rings of thousands of Holocaust victims.
Good move Michigan, and it's official local television sportscasting is dead.
(11:35):
I know this because it's in Sports Illustrated magazine. Also
because I wrote an article predicting this in a different
magazine in January of nineteen ninety two. That's next, this discountdown.
(11:55):
This is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead. We're doing
this out of order today because worse Persons is way
more interesting than the sports segment is. But coming up.
I used to be a local TV sportscaster. I did
the sports segment on the news three times a night,
(12:17):
six days a week. No, really, they used to have
sportscasters on the local news. That apparently is coming to
an end. I come not to praise local TV sportscasting,
but to burying it. Next first time for the daily
roundup of the miscrants, morons and dunning Kruger effects specimens
who constitute today's whereas persons in the world. The Bronze everybody,
(12:40):
from Trump who demanded a boycott to Greta van Sustran,
who called for a congressional investigation to Senators Tom Cotton,
Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Mike Lee who wrote a
letter threatening dire consequences and insisted this was liberal censorship.
What am I talking about about Newsmax and Direct TV?
Remember this, It was only last month Direct TV dropped Newsmax,
(13:03):
and the whiney but hurt snowflake fascists like Cruise demanded,
I don't know firing squads. We all told them, no,
it's not censorship. Newsmax gave its channel for free to
Direct TV, and then one day Newsmax said to Direct TV, look,
instead of free, we'd like you to give us thirteen
million dollars a year for it, and Direct TV said,
(13:26):
are you kidding? For that crap? Direct TV and Newsmax
have now made a deal. Terms not disclosed. Newsmax will
be back on the satellite provider. The head of Newsmax
now says it's great. The Direct TV quote clearly supports
diverse voices, including conservative ones and Cruz and Graham and
(13:46):
Trump and all the other morons who were wrong. Cruise
is still insisting its censorship because Ted Cruz is the dumbest,
most cynical, most manipulative son of a bitch in the Senate.
And I might remind you that Kirsten Cinema is in
the Senate. The runners up are melbur and MSNBC. Look,
(14:08):
I've been there. Your TV employer wants you to do
something that's obviously wrong, obviously insults your audience, obviously degrades you,
and violates your own morals and principles, and the point
of your entire career obviously shows that your employers are
trying to kiss the Republican's ass. I've been there, Ari Melburn,
(14:29):
I've been there at MSNBC. In fact, they tried to
put Michael Savage on my show in two thousand and three,
and then in two thousand and ten they tried to
put a whole slew of Republican contributors on my show.
I know your dilemma just because in two thousand and
three I called a cab to lead the studio and
told them I was quitting before I put Michael Savage
(14:51):
on my show, and just because in two thousand and
ten I sit Republican contributors Final Straw and I quit
a month later. But I get it. Not everybody can
do that. Not everybody puts the audience or their own
credibilit first. You do, you, Ariy Melbourne. But when MSNBC,
which keeps firing liberals and demoting diverse voices, when they
(15:14):
made you announce that it had hired for money former
Ohio Governor John Kasik as a Republican contributor to your
show into MSNBC. Did you have to show a super
cut of all of Kasik's great Republican moments and then
act so excited that he would be there and got
paid to lie about Republicans and America on MSNBC. We
(15:38):
appreciate your being here and welcome, but like I said,
I've been there. Of course I stopped it from happening,
and you didn't. But I understand your dilemma and the money.
But our winners the new chair of the Michigan State
GOP and her organization, Christina Caramo. Christina Caramo is the
(15:59):
crazy person election denier, sex with Demon's nutbag who was
elected a month to go to run the party in Michigan.
And I don't want to tell you Republicans how to
run your local fascist chapter, but I'm thinking long term.
Even for you guys, Christina Caramo is not really going
to help, and if you're smart, which you're not, you
(16:19):
would get rid of her, like, well, what time is
it now? Inside the next hour? The Michigan GOP has tweeted,
supposedly in defensive gun rights, this message quote. History has
shown us that the first thing a government does when
it wants total control over its people is to disarm them.
President Reagan once stated, if we lose freedom here, there
(16:40):
is nowhere to escape to. This is the last stand
on earth. Hashtag to a and below that is a
little meme. It's a photo. It's a photo from a
Nazi death camp during the Holocaust showing thousands of rings,
with the caption quote, before they collected all these wedding rings,
they collected all the guns. Now, obviously it's unconscionable and
(17:01):
grotesque to use imagery from the Holocaust and compare it
to pretty much anything, but particularly to the Second Amendment debate.
But it's also factually stupid and the inaccurate. Strict laws
against gun ownership in Germany were established by the German
Republic in the nineteen twenties. The Nazis actually loosened those
laws in many cases. Also, the Second Amendment doesn't have
(17:24):
a damn thing to do with gun ownership in this country.
That's why the word ownership isn't in the Second Amendment.
Oh and Christina Caramo and her clique of psychos who
have taken over the Michigan GOP. They're aligned in terms
of policy, hatred, prejudice, and mental instability with the nazis
(17:44):
not against them. So Christina Caramo and the tasteless, clueless,
gutless Michigan Republican Party, shut the f up. You are
two days worst persons. And this is Sports Center. Wait
(18:29):
check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman
in Sports. About one hundred and seventy two different people
have sent me an article from Sports Illustrated called the
Death of the Local sports Anchor by John Worthime. The
subheadline is marvelous. They were once gods walking among their immortals.
(18:52):
Now they're lucky to get two minutes. The Peace centers
on the last day of a local TV sportscaster in
Los Angeles named Fred Rogan after forty two years on
the job. There, I reported on his demise in January
and noted that when he had been there seven or
eight years on Channel four, I had been there two
or three years on Channel two. Back then, Fred Rogan
(19:14):
had a well, let's just call it a bit of
a substance problem. He projected a nice kid next door persona.
But after I made a joke about him on the air,
he called me up and said he had a tape
of everything I'd ever said about him, and he was
going to kill me. He also used to steal stories
from other stations, which we squelched. Once by teasing a
story about a trade that never happened. I did not
(19:37):
put it in my sportscast. Fred put it in his.
Once I got a call from a kid who said
Fred Rogan was about to give him an internship over
there at Channel four, but had instructed him that he
had one last task to accomplish. And the kid said,
I have to call you up and tell you to
go f yourself. The kid was named Bill Weir. He
later became a sportscaster in La matter of fact and
(20:00):
a news reporter, and I think he's still at CNN.
And the day he called me in nineteen nineteen ninety one,
I told him, you do realize I will never stop
telling this story about you, and I haven't hi Bill anyway.
The Sports Illustrated pieces about the death of local TV
sportscasting while we were all wildly overpaid. That's why most
(20:22):
of us did it. The best I ever saw at
local TV sportscasting, Glenn Brenner in Washington made a million
a year, and he was worth every penny of it.
I went from making seventy two grand at KTLA Channel
five in Los Angeles on a Friday in nineteen eighty
eight to making five hundred grand at KCBS in Los
(20:43):
Angeles two days later. It was fun. Then came ESPN,
so I went to ESPN. Anyway, there's a quote in
work Times Sports Illustrated piece from me about the amount
of publicity we local sportscasters used to get. Quote. Keith
old Remain, another LA sports anchor in the nineteen eighties,
(21:03):
once remarked during an earthquake, your chances were one in
three of being crushed by a Fred Rogan billboard unquote.
Fittingly to the point that local sportscasting is being phased out,
I said that in nineteen eighty six. Anyway, Worth Time
notes that a Boston station announced in January it was
(21:24):
testing a six pm newscast with no sports at all,
and that rang a distant bell and made me look
at my cobwebs strewn archives. It seems to me that
I had written a piece about the eventual extinction of
the local TV sportscaster. And there it was from La
Style Magazine, a gorgeous monthly publication which naturally went out
(21:46):
of business because magazines are like local TV sportscasters. The
piece isn't too long, and it's pretty prescient, given it
was written thirty one years ago, so I thought, it's
my podcast. If you don't care, you can skip ahead.
I'm not going to take it personally, or just shut
it off. We'll see you tomorrow. Anyway. This was printed
in either ju or February nineteen ninety two, and the
(22:06):
only thing I've changed in it is the references to
years and times, because guess what, nineteen eighty five is
not seven years ago anymore. She's anyway, here goes when
I came to LA seven years ago in nineteen eighty five.
The other principal sportscasters were Jim Hill, Stu Nahan, Ted Dawson,
(22:29):
Scott Saint James and Tom Kelly. Dawson and Saint James
were distinguished from the others by being the loudest, Nahan
and Kelly by being the oldest, and Hill by being
the guy who always got the interview but never asked
the question. Otherwise, their programs were all the same scores, highlights, previews, predictions,
an occasional rant, and a periodic rave, but at least
(22:53):
they reported sports news. It was always my viewpoint that
sports was not covered seriously enough, while at the same
time it was covered way too seriously. The business of sports,
the hippocracy, the violence, the human tragedies, and triumphs were
usually glossed over so a few more home runs could
be shown simultaneously. Sportscasters refused to comment on the twenty
(23:15):
percent of sports that is basically absurd, from events like
tractor polls and motorcycle racing on ice two fans dressed
up as slabs of luncheon meat. The problem was that,
with the advent of cable TV and the competition it
brought to local sports coverage, the local television news sportscast
needed to be retooled so that it would cover the
(23:36):
extremes of the spectrum and not just the routine middle.
With this retooling, however, a Pandora's box was open. While
the viewers tended to respect the serious reporting and criticism,
they were driven flat out bonkers by those guys dressed
up as salamis. Viewers quietly enjoyed the memorial to Roger
(23:57):
Marris that I did once, but they telephoned my station
in droves demanding that we keep playing videotape from a
New Year Giants super Bowl party showing tiny Tim getting
hit in the privates with a snowball. A few months
after I had arrived in La Nahan was out at
Channel four and Fred Rogan had begun his non stop
(24:18):
descent into the full time coverage of fans dressed as salamis.
Vic the Brick Jacobs was imported by Channel thirteen and
started throwing things at the camera. Channel seven unleashed Todd Donahoe, who,
on the night that former Angels pitcher Donnie Moore shot
and wounded his wife and then killed himself, still began
(24:38):
his sportscast with the trivia question, as it will eventually
prove for all local sportscasters around the nation. Inside this
Pandora's box was also the doomsday machine. Sports news was
always included in TV newscast because there was an unwritten
law that it had to be. So what if even
in the pre cable days of the seventies and early eighties,
(25:02):
an average of only fifteen percent of local viewers, it
was found, actually care about the subject. In Los Angeles,
the male audience that made up the bulk of that
fifteen percent now gets home after the four, five, and
six o'clock newscasts are over and goes to sleep before
the eleven o'clock begins. In between, in addition to a
(25:23):
swarm of ball games, sports fans can now watch a
half hour cable sportscast at eight, an hour long one
at eight thirty, a local half hour at ten, and
two competing half hours at eleven thirty. These guys just
don't watch the local newscasts anymore. By the end of
my tenure at KCBS, management was claiming the audience for
(25:46):
the five o'clock newscast was three quarters women, women who
actually got angry when they saw news time wasted on
sports that could have been devoted on something important like Madonna.
So in local news, a masset of television that is
losing viewers of all kinds and losing money in all
(26:06):
kinds of frightening amounts. Sportscasts are becoming a liability. They
require a large department of producers, the services of videotape editors,
and a huge salary outlay. Talent agents whose lives and
livelihoods depend on such information. Confirmed that last year fully
half of the on air sportscasting jobs that opened up
(26:27):
on local stations around the country were not filled. Last
year being nineteen ninety one. In La, k NBC cutback
from three sportscasters to two, KCBS replaced its number two
guy with a freelancer, and after my departure, had for
a time no staff sportscasters. As yet, local stations have
(26:49):
merely been cutting back on sports coverage. In a span
of a few months last year, KCBS reduced the daily
average of twelve minutes of sports in its newscasts to
seven and a half minutes. At KNBC, Rogan's Bellweather Sunday
Night Sports Law forty percent of its audience between May
nineteen eighty nine and November nineteen ninety one, and the
(27:10):
show was relegated to a later time slot, and the
pressure from cable is increasing. My new employer, ESPN again,
this is nineteen ninety two. My new employer, ESPN is
cooking up a second network that would be nothing less
than a perpetual sportscast, all highlights, all the time, forever. Inevitably,
(27:33):
sportscast will begin to disappear outright from the local news.
Floating around CBS headquarters is an outline for eliminating them
in such cities as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami, and
Los Angeles, first from the afternoon newscasts and then from
the late night versions. Local team highlights would still be
shown narrated by newscasters. Weekend coverage will continue, and the
(27:57):
local postgame show tacked onto a network sporting event, will flourish,
but the Sunday night wrap up shows will vanish. Someday somewhere,
I'll have this conversation with some youngster, way back before
the turn of this entry, I used to do the
sports on some stations in Los Angeles. What the Dodgers,
(28:19):
the kid will say, the Lakers, No, all of them.
I used to show all the highlights on the news
on the news, Sports on the news honest to God,
he'll look at me and then screw his face up
in confusion. Why so, that was my prophecy in LA
(28:44):
Style magazine in nineteen ninety two, got us say the
local sports cast has lasted way longer than I expected
it would thirty one years ago, although the salaries didn't.
When I went to ESPN to do Sports Center, I
was making about two fifths of what I had been
paid in LA. That was a surprise. When I went
back to ESPN in twenty thirteen, I was making about
(29:07):
as much as all the local TV sportscasters in New
York City combined, and I was maybe the twentieth highest
paid guy at ESPN. Anyway, while we're on this subject,
this Rogan fella and I had one memorable contest that
pertained to the greatest scoop I have ever gotten in
(29:28):
my life, a scoop for which I did almost nothing.
I earned none of the credit that I got. And
then came Awards season, and well I got my come upance.
Fred Rogan cleaned my clock. Next, finally, I number one
(29:58):
story on the countdown Things I promised not to tell.
And back to my favorite topic me, This is thirty
four years ago. So it was August eighth, nineteen eighty
eight on the West coast. But by the time I
got the story on the air at ten PMPDT and
it made all the wires that made it August ninth,
nineteen eighty eight. So happy double Day Anniversary, Wayne Gretzky.
(30:21):
Just after dinner, the phone rang in my office at
Channel five in La Hi, I'm a viewer. I took
a deep breath. You never knew where a call that
started like that was going to end up. I just
wanted to Janoah. I was out golfing at Riviera at
the Riviera Clubs afternoon and Bruce McNall, the owner of
the Kings, well, he just walked through the locker room saying, hey, guys,
(30:44):
if you want to buy your seasoned King's tickets, do
it now. I just traded for Wayne Gretzky. The price
is going to go up next week. To be polite
to the viewer, I asked a few questions, but frankly,
the story was pretty stupid. This was the second week
of August nineteen eighty eight, and there was a lot
of talk that the Edmonton Oilers, We're going to trade
(31:04):
Wayne Gretzky, the most famous player in hockey, and there
was nearly as much talk that that trade would send
him to us in LA. But the owner of the
Kings just telling passers by at random in a golf
clubhouse that he had just made the trade. I was
suspicious that I was being pranked. Fifteen minutes later, my
(31:28):
phone rang again. Hi, I'm a big fan of yours
and I watch every night. Here we go again. I
was just having lunch with a friend of mine out
here at the golf course in bel Air, And in
like an hour later, freaking Bruce McNall shows up in
the dining room and asks for everybody's attention, and he
says he's just completed the deal for Wayne Gretzky. And
and now I was beginning to get actually worried. I
(31:51):
was a lame duck as the sports director of Channel
five in Los Angeles, and four months there had been
rumors that I was moving down the street to Channel
two in Los Angeles. There had been these rumors mostly
because I was moving down the street to Channel two.
The deal had been done months earlier. We were going
to announce it that week. In fact, as these two
guys called in I had actually been busily packing up
(32:14):
my Channel five office. My thought now was that the
sportscaster at the local NBC station, who had a bit
of a substance problem and a nasty temper and a
real dislike for the fact that I was nearly as
popular as he was, was setting me up. I had
once managed to mislead him into thinking we were about
(32:34):
to break a story about a big LA football trade.
There was no breaking story because there was no trade,
and he had actually mentioned it on the air, having
clearly stolen it from me because I was the one
who had made it up. And oh was he furious
at me? For all I knew he wanted to embarrass
me three weeks before I moved into direct competition with
(32:55):
him at five, six and eleven. This August eighth, nineteen
eighty eight was in fact my first day back after
I had burned all my Channel five vacation time, And
for all I knew, this guy at NBC had been
having his staffers call me for a week with made
up sightings of McNall confirming a Gretzky trade that frankly
I never believe was going to happen. I mean not
(33:16):
to get two sidetracked here. But one day my phone
rang and it was a kid who said, I'm mister Oberman.
I'm sorry, but I'm a finalist to be an intern
here at Channel four for Fred Rogan, and mister Rogan
says I can have the spot, but only if I
call you up right now and say I'm sorry. If
I call you up and I tell you to go
f yourself, the kid did not say f To his credit,
(33:40):
he used his real name, Bill Weir. He later became
a sportscaster for the third Network station in LA, then
a correspondent for ABC and now CNN and I have
not let a year go by since without reminding him
of his f yourself internship phone call. He said life
paid him back by making him work with the guy
(34:01):
for several months. Anyway, back to Gretzky Night, two supposed
listeners have called to say that Bruce McNall, the owner
of the La Kings, is apparently trapsing through golf locker
rooms and dining rooms at country clubs to tell them
he has completed a trade for the babe Ruth of hockey,
Wayne Gretzky. And they're calling me because they like me
(34:21):
I'm suspicious, And now the phone rings again. This guy
was playing golf at the La Country Club. Same story. McNall,
by your kream's tickets. No, I just got Gretzky. The
next caller had been at yet a fourth club. I
think will share or something. If this was at prank,
it was a big one, and bluntly I had begun
(34:42):
to admire it. Finally came a fifth call. You don't
known me, but I watch you every night. I stumbled
onto a story. I think you'll want to run tonight.
I said, which golf course were you at? And he said,
excuse me. I was in my office all day, and
so was my missus. She's on the phone with me.
She works for Bruce McNall, the Kings. This time I
(35:05):
grabbed a pencil, honey, why don't you take it from here?
And she did. She worked in the finance office and
she had, literally, she said, just made out a check
for fifteen million dollars to the owner of the Edmonton Oilers,
Peter Pocklington. She said, and the note memo, were you white?
Write what it's for? I was told to put in
Wayne Gretzky. She also had seen the trade contract identified
(35:30):
the players that Kings were going to give up with
the fifteen million to get Gretzky. They were Jimmy Carson
and Martin Zellela. There were also draft choices, but she
didn't know or didn't remember the specifics of which ones. Now, breathless,
I asked her if I could call her back through
the switchboard of the LA Forum where the Kings and
McNall's offices were, just to confirm she was who she
(35:52):
said she was. She said I could, I did, she was.
I believe. In fact, she turned out to be the
only person on the McNall financial team that did not
get charged with something. So now I went in to
talk to my news director and to the producer of
our newscast. We were not on until ten PM. It
was now about seven. They were very excited, and they
(36:12):
said that given that I had exact details from a
King's source, plus the four witnesses to the owner of
the team shooting off his big bazoo at every golf
course he could reach, that we should run it, and
that we should run it as the lead news story
right at the start of the newscast that night, which
we did. The Kings would not confirm it, obviously, but
(36:34):
as soon as I got off the air with my
sportscast the second time I reported this story, a reporter
from the Associated Press was on the phone asking me
to read him my script, which he then quoted word
for word and put out on their sportswire. It was
on the back page of the New York Post. The
next day, my friends called me from New York to say, Hey,
(36:55):
your sportscast is on the back page of the New
York Post along with this big picture of Wayne Gretzky.
The leak caused the Kings to move up the announcement
of the deal from their original plan, which was Thursday
the eleventh, to the next night, Tuesday the ninth. A
King's vice president told me at the press conference that
the Oilers were in rage because they had wanted to
(37:16):
hold off until the eleventh because the deadline for their
season ticket holders to get their deposits back were Wednesday
the tenth. The Kings were nice enough to let me
of all the TV guys interviewed Gretzky First Live, and
I congratulated Wayne on the move, and he actually congratulated
me on the scoop, and I said I didn't do
anything but answer the phone, and he thought about it
(37:37):
for a second and said pretty much the same for me,
and we've been friendly ever since. But the laziest scoop
of all time did eventually come back with a sting
for me and some payback. A year later, we all
submitted our best stories for consideration for the local Emmy
for Best TV Sports Reporting for the calendar year nineteen
(37:57):
eighty eight. I submitted Surprise, Surprise, the Gretzky scoop. The
Emmys were always judged by a committee of television types
from a different city, so he didn't have that home
la Bias. And the guy from NBC, who I had
first thought was pranking me about the Gretzky story, had
somehow found out that the Emmys for nineteen eighty eight
(38:18):
would be judged in nineteen eighty nine in Ohio. In Columbus, Ohio,
I think. So he managed to get an interview with
MORGANA the Kissing Bandit, who was this scantily clad bucksom
woman you may remember, who in the old days of innocence,
used to bribe her way onto Major League Baseball fields
and bounce out onto the plate or the mound, and
(38:40):
she'd go and kiss stars like George Brett and Nolan
Ryan during games. Morgana. Morgana Roberts lived near Columbus, Ohio,
so sure enough, at the Emmy's the next year, my
exclusive report of the trade of Hockey's greatest player, Wayne
Gretzky was one of the finalists for the Los Angeles
Best TV Sports Reporting Emmy. But in the ceremony, and
(39:04):
it was at Old Landmark Hotel in Pasadena, they showed
clips of all the pieces that were finalists and then
announced that the winner was Fred Rogan k NBC. For
being chased by Morgana the Kissing bandit, my agent stood
up and booed. My girlfriend punched me in the arm
(39:25):
and said, let's get out of here and go drinking.
We left. I've done all the damage I can do here.
Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of
(39:47):
the music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray
and John Philip Channel, who are the Countdown musical directors.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitars based
and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers, and
the mystery villain was Wayne Gretzky. Other Beethoven selections have
been arranged and performed by No horns allowed. The sports
(40:09):
music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and it
was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments from Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was John Deane. Everything else is pretty
much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the eight
hundred and seventh day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest
(40:32):
him now while we still can, or if it's already
happened as you listen to this, arrest him again while
we still can. The next schedule countdown is tomorrow, So
until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(40:59):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. And
we're back to counting how many angels are dancing on
(00:25):
the head of one particular pin. We're better still, how
many of Stormy Daniels wrenches are dancing inside the monkey works.
NBC reports the Stormy Daniels grand Jury is back in
the saddle today in New York. First, CNN said it
was on standby, then they switched to its back about
eight thirty last night. Both networks hint at additional witness testimony.
(00:49):
Politico says it's an old witness coming back to rebut
a new witness, which would be Michael Cohen. CNN says
it could be a new witness and even floated the
name of Stormy Daniels and says the delay has been
DA Alvin Bragg and his prosecutors trying to decide if
the best rebuttal of the new witnesses from the old
witness Cohen or the new witness to be announced. The
(01:11):
right wing blogosphere is quoting a Fox analyst saying the
DA hid six hundred pages of exculpatory evidence, or is
it six thousand or is it sixty thousand, but not
one Fox story makes the slightest reference to this nor
to its own supposed analyst. Nobody, but nobody thinks there'd
(01:32):
actually be an indictment today, which means, given how this
story has been going for the last week, it is
time for Captain Reynaud to say, round up the usual suspects.
The only participant in all of this to go on
the record is a Trump lawyer, and one with a
terrible reputation, and he testified Monday in order to try
to impeach the witness, Michael Cohen. And he says he
(01:55):
quote through a wrench in their monkey works, which would
be a great headline, except, of course it's through a
monkey wrench into the works, because there's no such thing
as monkey works. Then there appeared a twenty eighteen letter
in which Cohen lied to the Feds that he made
(02:17):
the payment to Stormy Daniels, and the Trump apologist all said, aha,
and everybody else said, we already knew Cohen lied to
the Feds about that payment. That's why he went to jail.
But even that claim of throwing a wrench in their
monkey works by the Trump mouthpiece Robert Costello does not
add up, because if Costello really did damage Cohen on Monday.
(02:40):
Cohen was at the courthouse Monday waiting to be called
back in, and he wasn't, and he wasn't Tuesday, and
he wasn't yesterday. If your head already hurts, that's Trump's plan.
That has been Trump's plan since the nineteen seventies. Whenever
he has been in trouble, whether it is presidential trouble
(03:03):
or indictment trouble or football trouble, he has flooded the
zone with them feces. This is why he has eleventy
billion different lawyers. If one tells the truth and that
truth gets Trump in trouble, Trump just as a new lawyer,
betray the old lawyer and blame the old lawyer if
the story is too easy to follow. Trump had Michael
(03:25):
Cohen pay a porn star to keep quiet about an
affair so it wouldn't come out before the election. And
that's a bribe and an illegal business records felony, and
an illegal campaign contribution. Trump makes sure he throws different
attorneys and different spokespeople and different right wing media sycophants
to attack each part of the story separately, so quickly,
(03:48):
so loudly, and so voluinously that you no longer have
any idea what anybody is talking about. And if you
like to think meta here, if Trump was really convinced
that the stormy Daniel's case would not lead to him
being indicted and arrested, the biggest scam he could ever
pull would be too dramatically announced that he was about
(04:11):
to be arrested, because he could raise a lot of
campaign money off of the outrage. And then when it
didn't happen, when he wasn't arrested, he could claim he
stopped them from arresting him, or his supporters stopped them
from arresting him, or the fundraising stopped them from arresting him,
or Gods stopped them from arresting him. Then he could
(04:33):
make sure a long sympathetic and easily led newspaper person
like just to pick a name, Magga Haberman could find
out that Trump is sitting at Marilago saying that a
purp walk with cameras and reporters could be fun, and
obviously she'd write that, and then he'd look brave and
valiant and defiant in him martyr, because he's not just
(04:55):
willing to face the proverbial firing squad, but he's willing
to face it without a blindfold unless he really is arrested,
and then he's got a different problem because he comes
out of that one one of two ways, like I
suggested yesterday, Suddenly he's Glorious Swanson playing Norma Desmond right
after she murders the guy in Sunset Boulevard, and she
(05:16):
thinks she's making her movie come back and she's a star,
when in fact it is a purp walk and she's nuts.
And at the opposite end of that spectrum, Trump could
be in trouble boasting about how much fun a purp
walk would be when the DA's office has already said
there will not be a purp walk, and then they
arrest Trump, and to get the effect Trump has already promised,
(05:37):
he would have to walk out in front of the
cameras voluntarily holding his hands tightly behind his back, as
if he'd been handcuffed like a mime. Happily, As the
Stormy Daniel's case gets cloudier, the Marilago documents case keeps
getting clear. ABC first reported Tuesday night that the judge
(06:00):
called Trump's assertions last May that he had given all
the him It's back part of a quote, criminal scheme,
and she said that the Special Counsel Jack Smith had
shown quote prima facie evidence showing that the former president
had committed criminal violations. ABC also reported that the stuff
Trump lawyer Evan Corkrane now had to turn over to
(06:22):
Smith included transcripts of quote, private audio which appeared to
be recordings Corkrane made of Trump. Then came the bizarre
overnight appeal process by Trump to block the waiver of
attorney client privilege with Corkrane, which turned out against Trump
and which will apparently not be taken to a higher court.
Though this is Trump, and if he ever stopped paying
(06:47):
lawyers to do useless things for him, thousands of attorneys
would almost instantly starve on the streets within hours, and
the world economy would collapse. Now ABC has more informed
reporting that there are six topics about which Evan Corkran
has been ordered to give his testimony to the Special
Counsel Smith. One was Trump or anybody working for Trump
(07:11):
aware of this certification document that's at the center of
the thing, the document that Corkoran wrote and had Christina
Bob sign, which they then turned over the Department of Justice.
After what the document falsely says, was Trump voluntarily turning
over any remaining documents he still held at Marilago last spring?
Whoever signed that maybe guilty of perjury. Whoever wrote it
(07:34):
may be guilty of perjury. Whoever ordered it may be
guilty of subordination of perjury. Topic number two. Smith wants
Corkran to answer specifically, did Trump approve the claim in
that document that there had been a quote diligent search
and did Trump approve of the certification then being given
to the government. Number three. Corcoran also has to testify
(07:58):
about what steps he took to determine where the classified
documents were at Marilago and why he thought they were
all in the storage room. This all goes back to
the idea of did you just take Trump's word for it?
And did Trump tell you just to take his word
for it. Four. Corkran has to explain why they made
Christina Bob the fall Gal the designated custodian of all
(08:22):
the documents Trump held as an aside. I'm betting the
answer is nobody likes her. Five. Corkran has to explain
if he talked to Bob about this, and if so,
what did they say the custodian part, not the nobody
likes her part. And six and this all goes back
(08:42):
to the idea that Trump knew what he was doing
when a document that lied and said, all those classified documents,
I've turned them all over again. Here the signatures of
a couple of lawyers that Trump knew that in advance
and knew it was a lie in advance. It goes
to four knowledge of a crime and elevates the whole
thing monumentally. That's sixth one. There was a phone call
(09:05):
between Corkran and Trump on June twenty fourth, the same
day that the grand jury subpoena demanding Trump turn over
the surveillance footage of the Marilago storage room, which the
Department of Justice believed would show people moving boxes in
and out of it. The same day that subpoena showed
up at Marilago. This is a no brainer. Smith gets
(09:27):
to ask Corkran specifics about his call with Trump that day,
just happening to be the same day as the subpoena arrived.
Plus Smith gets all the documents and that tantalizing transcript
Corcoran has, which we already knew. So there it is
in the courtrooms of New York and Washington. Clear as
(09:49):
a bell. We know exactly what's going to happen from
here on in, unless somebody else throws a monkey wrench
into the works, or we're a wrench into the into
the monkey works, or the wait, unless somebody throws a
monkey into the wrench works. He's this year minky a
(10:28):
monkey into the wrench works, still ahead of us in
this edition of Countdown. For seven months, I've been telling
you how new management, namely the paste eating guy, has
been pushing CNN to the right under the guise of balance.
Now looks like it started at MSNBC, which has just
hired a former Republican governor and made one of its
(10:49):
hosts welcome him like anybody watching MSNBC wanted to see
a Republican governor, and the host stood up to this perversion,
like like somebody who really likes that NBC money. You
know what happens when you elect a new chair of
your state Republican party and you select the woman who
believes abortion is just to cover up of satanic child
(11:11):
sacrifice and that demonic possession can be transmissible by sex
with demons. Well, what happens is you get tweets over
your party's name comparing gun control to the Holocaust, complete
with pictures of the wedding rings of thousands of Holocaust victims.
Good move Michigan, and it's official local television sportscasting is dead.
(11:35):
I know this because it's in Sports Illustrated magazine. Also
because I wrote an article predicting this in a different
magazine in January of nineteen ninety two. That's next, this discountdown.
(11:55):
This is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead. We're doing
this out of order today because worse Persons is way
more interesting than the sports segment is. But coming up.
I used to be a local TV sportscaster. I did
the sports segment on the news three times a night,
(12:17):
six days a week. No, really, they used to have
sportscasters on the local news. That apparently is coming to
an end. I come not to praise local TV sportscasting,
but to burying it. Next first time for the daily
roundup of the miscrants, morons and dunning Kruger effects specimens
who constitute today's whereas persons in the world. The Bronze everybody,
(12:40):
from Trump who demanded a boycott to Greta van Sustran,
who called for a congressional investigation to Senators Tom Cotton,
Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Mike Lee who wrote a
letter threatening dire consequences and insisted this was liberal censorship.
What am I talking about about Newsmax and Direct TV?
Remember this, It was only last month Direct TV dropped Newsmax,
(13:03):
and the whiney but hurt snowflake fascists like Cruise demanded,
I don't know firing squads. We all told them, no,
it's not censorship. Newsmax gave its channel for free to
Direct TV, and then one day Newsmax said to Direct TV, look,
instead of free, we'd like you to give us thirteen
million dollars a year for it, and Direct TV said,
(13:26):
are you kidding? For that crap? Direct TV and Newsmax
have now made a deal. Terms not disclosed. Newsmax will
be back on the satellite provider. The head of Newsmax
now says it's great. The Direct TV quote clearly supports
diverse voices, including conservative ones and Cruz and Graham and
(13:46):
Trump and all the other morons who were wrong. Cruise
is still insisting its censorship because Ted Cruz is the dumbest,
most cynical, most manipulative son of a bitch in the Senate.
And I might remind you that Kirsten Cinema is in
the Senate. The runners up are melbur and MSNBC. Look,
(14:08):
I've been there. Your TV employer wants you to do
something that's obviously wrong, obviously insults your audience, obviously degrades you,
and violates your own morals and principles, and the point
of your entire career obviously shows that your employers are
trying to kiss the Republican's ass. I've been there, Ari Melburn,
(14:29):
I've been there at MSNBC. In fact, they tried to
put Michael Savage on my show in two thousand and three,
and then in two thousand and ten they tried to
put a whole slew of Republican contributors on my show.
I know your dilemma just because in two thousand and
three I called a cab to lead the studio and
told them I was quitting before I put Michael Savage
(14:51):
on my show, and just because in two thousand and
ten I sit Republican contributors Final Straw and I quit
a month later. But I get it. Not everybody can
do that. Not everybody puts the audience or their own
credibilit first. You do, you, Ariy Melbourne. But when MSNBC,
which keeps firing liberals and demoting diverse voices, when they
(15:14):
made you announce that it had hired for money former
Ohio Governor John Kasik as a Republican contributor to your
show into MSNBC. Did you have to show a super
cut of all of Kasik's great Republican moments and then
act so excited that he would be there and got
paid to lie about Republicans and America on MSNBC. We
(15:38):
appreciate your being here and welcome, but like I said,
I've been there. Of course I stopped it from happening,
and you didn't. But I understand your dilemma and the money.
But our winners the new chair of the Michigan State
GOP and her organization, Christina Caramo. Christina Caramo is the
(15:59):
crazy person election denier, sex with Demon's nutbag who was
elected a month to go to run the party in Michigan.
And I don't want to tell you Republicans how to
run your local fascist chapter, but I'm thinking long term.
Even for you guys, Christina Caramo is not really going
to help, and if you're smart, which you're not, you
(16:19):
would get rid of her, like, well, what time is
it now? Inside the next hour? The Michigan GOP has tweeted,
supposedly in defensive gun rights, this message quote. History has
shown us that the first thing a government does when
it wants total control over its people is to disarm them.
President Reagan once stated, if we lose freedom here, there
(16:40):
is nowhere to escape to. This is the last stand
on earth. Hashtag to a and below that is a
little meme. It's a photo. It's a photo from a
Nazi death camp during the Holocaust showing thousands of rings,
with the caption quote, before they collected all these wedding rings,
they collected all the guns. Now, obviously it's unconscionable and
(17:01):
grotesque to use imagery from the Holocaust and compare it
to pretty much anything, but particularly to the Second Amendment debate.
But it's also factually stupid and the inaccurate. Strict laws
against gun ownership in Germany were established by the German
Republic in the nineteen twenties. The Nazis actually loosened those
laws in many cases. Also, the Second Amendment doesn't have
(17:24):
a damn thing to do with gun ownership in this country.
That's why the word ownership isn't in the Second Amendment.
Oh and Christina Caramo and her clique of psychos who
have taken over the Michigan GOP. They're aligned in terms
of policy, hatred, prejudice, and mental instability with the nazis
(17:44):
not against them. So Christina Caramo and the tasteless, clueless,
gutless Michigan Republican Party, shut the f up. You are
two days worst persons. And this is Sports Center. Wait
(18:29):
check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman
in Sports. About one hundred and seventy two different people
have sent me an article from Sports Illustrated called the
Death of the Local sports Anchor by John Worthime. The
subheadline is marvelous. They were once gods walking among their immortals.
(18:52):
Now they're lucky to get two minutes. The Peace centers
on the last day of a local TV sportscaster in
Los Angeles named Fred Rogan after forty two years on
the job. There, I reported on his demise in January
and noted that when he had been there seven or
eight years on Channel four, I had been there two
or three years on Channel two. Back then, Fred Rogan
(19:14):
had a well, let's just call it a bit of
a substance problem. He projected a nice kid next door persona.
But after I made a joke about him on the air,
he called me up and said he had a tape
of everything I'd ever said about him, and he was
going to kill me. He also used to steal stories
from other stations, which we squelched. Once by teasing a
story about a trade that never happened. I did not
(19:37):
put it in my sportscast. Fred put it in his.
Once I got a call from a kid who said
Fred Rogan was about to give him an internship over
there at Channel four, but had instructed him that he
had one last task to accomplish. And the kid said,
I have to call you up and tell you to
go f yourself. The kid was named Bill Weir. He
later became a sportscaster in La matter of fact and
(20:00):
a news reporter, and I think he's still at CNN.
And the day he called me in nineteen nineteen ninety one,
I told him, you do realize I will never stop
telling this story about you, and I haven't hi Bill anyway.
The Sports Illustrated pieces about the death of local TV
sportscasting while we were all wildly overpaid. That's why most
(20:22):
of us did it. The best I ever saw at
local TV sportscasting, Glenn Brenner in Washington made a million
a year, and he was worth every penny of it.
I went from making seventy two grand at KTLA Channel
five in Los Angeles on a Friday in nineteen eighty
eight to making five hundred grand at KCBS in Los
(20:43):
Angeles two days later. It was fun. Then came ESPN,
so I went to ESPN. Anyway, there's a quote in
work Times Sports Illustrated piece from me about the amount
of publicity we local sportscasters used to get. Quote. Keith
old Remain, another LA sports anchor in the nineteen eighties,
(21:03):
once remarked during an earthquake, your chances were one in
three of being crushed by a Fred Rogan billboard unquote.
Fittingly to the point that local sportscasting is being phased out,
I said that in nineteen eighty six. Anyway, Worth Time
notes that a Boston station announced in January it was
(21:24):
testing a six pm newscast with no sports at all,
and that rang a distant bell and made me look
at my cobwebs strewn archives. It seems to me that
I had written a piece about the eventual extinction of
the local TV sportscaster. And there it was from La
Style Magazine, a gorgeous monthly publication which naturally went out
(21:46):
of business because magazines are like local TV sportscasters. The
piece isn't too long, and it's pretty prescient, given it
was written thirty one years ago, so I thought, it's
my podcast. If you don't care, you can skip ahead.
I'm not going to take it personally, or just shut
it off. We'll see you tomorrow. Anyway. This was printed
in either ju or February nineteen ninety two, and the
(22:06):
only thing I've changed in it is the references to
years and times, because guess what, nineteen eighty five is
not seven years ago anymore. She's anyway, here goes when
I came to LA seven years ago in nineteen eighty five.
The other principal sportscasters were Jim Hill, Stu Nahan, Ted Dawson,
(22:29):
Scott Saint James and Tom Kelly. Dawson and Saint James
were distinguished from the others by being the loudest, Nahan
and Kelly by being the oldest, and Hill by being
the guy who always got the interview but never asked
the question. Otherwise, their programs were all the same scores, highlights, previews, predictions,
an occasional rant, and a periodic rave, but at least
(22:53):
they reported sports news. It was always my viewpoint that
sports was not covered seriously enough, while at the same
time it was covered way too seriously. The business of sports,
the hippocracy, the violence, the human tragedies, and triumphs were
usually glossed over so a few more home runs could
be shown simultaneously. Sportscasters refused to comment on the twenty
(23:15):
percent of sports that is basically absurd, from events like
tractor polls and motorcycle racing on ice two fans dressed
up as slabs of luncheon meat. The problem was that,
with the advent of cable TV and the competition it
brought to local sports coverage, the local television news sportscast
needed to be retooled so that it would cover the
(23:36):
extremes of the spectrum and not just the routine middle.
With this retooling, however, a Pandora's box was open. While
the viewers tended to respect the serious reporting and criticism,
they were driven flat out bonkers by those guys dressed
up as salamis. Viewers quietly enjoyed the memorial to Roger
(23:57):
Marris that I did once, but they telephoned my station
in droves demanding that we keep playing videotape from a
New Year Giants super Bowl party showing tiny Tim getting
hit in the privates with a snowball. A few months
after I had arrived in La Nahan was out at
Channel four and Fred Rogan had begun his non stop
(24:18):
descent into the full time coverage of fans dressed as salamis.
Vic the Brick Jacobs was imported by Channel thirteen and
started throwing things at the camera. Channel seven unleashed Todd Donahoe, who,
on the night that former Angels pitcher Donnie Moore shot
and wounded his wife and then killed himself, still began
(24:38):
his sportscast with the trivia question, as it will eventually
prove for all local sportscasters around the nation. Inside this
Pandora's box was also the doomsday machine. Sports news was
always included in TV newscast because there was an unwritten
law that it had to be. So what if even
in the pre cable days of the seventies and early eighties,
(25:02):
an average of only fifteen percent of local viewers, it
was found, actually care about the subject. In Los Angeles,
the male audience that made up the bulk of that
fifteen percent now gets home after the four, five, and
six o'clock newscasts are over and goes to sleep before
the eleven o'clock begins. In between, in addition to a
(25:23):
swarm of ball games, sports fans can now watch a
half hour cable sportscast at eight, an hour long one
at eight thirty, a local half hour at ten, and
two competing half hours at eleven thirty. These guys just
don't watch the local newscasts anymore. By the end of
my tenure at KCBS, management was claiming the audience for
(25:46):
the five o'clock newscast was three quarters women, women who
actually got angry when they saw news time wasted on
sports that could have been devoted on something important like Madonna.
So in local news, a masset of television that is
losing viewers of all kinds and losing money in all
(26:06):
kinds of frightening amounts. Sportscasts are becoming a liability. They
require a large department of producers, the services of videotape editors,
and a huge salary outlay. Talent agents whose lives and
livelihoods depend on such information. Confirmed that last year fully
half of the on air sportscasting jobs that opened up
(26:27):
on local stations around the country were not filled. Last
year being nineteen ninety one. In La, k NBC cutback
from three sportscasters to two, KCBS replaced its number two
guy with a freelancer, and after my departure, had for
a time no staff sportscasters. As yet, local stations have
(26:49):
merely been cutting back on sports coverage. In a span
of a few months last year, KCBS reduced the daily
average of twelve minutes of sports in its newscasts to
seven and a half minutes. At KNBC, Rogan's Bellweather Sunday
Night Sports Law forty percent of its audience between May
nineteen eighty nine and November nineteen ninety one, and the
(27:10):
show was relegated to a later time slot, and the
pressure from cable is increasing. My new employer, ESPN again,
this is nineteen ninety two. My new employer, ESPN is
cooking up a second network that would be nothing less
than a perpetual sportscast, all highlights, all the time, forever. Inevitably,
(27:33):
sportscast will begin to disappear outright from the local news.
Floating around CBS headquarters is an outline for eliminating them
in such cities as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami, and
Los Angeles, first from the afternoon newscasts and then from
the late night versions. Local team highlights would still be
shown narrated by newscasters. Weekend coverage will continue, and the
(27:57):
local postgame show tacked onto a network sporting event, will flourish,
but the Sunday night wrap up shows will vanish. Someday somewhere,
I'll have this conversation with some youngster, way back before
the turn of this entry, I used to do the
sports on some stations in Los Angeles. What the Dodgers,
(28:19):
the kid will say, the Lakers, No, all of them.
I used to show all the highlights on the news
on the news, Sports on the news honest to God,
he'll look at me and then screw his face up
in confusion. Why so, that was my prophecy in LA
(28:44):
Style magazine in nineteen ninety two, got us say the
local sports cast has lasted way longer than I expected
it would thirty one years ago, although the salaries didn't.
When I went to ESPN to do Sports Center, I
was making about two fifths of what I had been
paid in LA. That was a surprise. When I went
back to ESPN in twenty thirteen, I was making about
(29:07):
as much as all the local TV sportscasters in New
York City combined, and I was maybe the twentieth highest
paid guy at ESPN. Anyway, while we're on this subject,
this Rogan fella and I had one memorable contest that
pertained to the greatest scoop I have ever gotten in
(29:28):
my life, a scoop for which I did almost nothing.
I earned none of the credit that I got. And
then came Awards season, and well I got my come upance.
Fred Rogan cleaned my clock. Next, finally, I number one
(29:58):
story on the countdown Things I promised not to tell.
And back to my favorite topic me, This is thirty
four years ago. So it was August eighth, nineteen eighty
eight on the West coast. But by the time I
got the story on the air at ten PMPDT and
it made all the wires that made it August ninth,
nineteen eighty eight. So happy double Day Anniversary, Wayne Gretzky.
(30:21):
Just after dinner, the phone rang in my office at
Channel five in La Hi, I'm a viewer. I took
a deep breath. You never knew where a call that
started like that was going to end up. I just
wanted to Janoah. I was out golfing at Riviera at
the Riviera Clubs afternoon and Bruce McNall, the owner of
the Kings, well, he just walked through the locker room saying, hey, guys,
(30:44):
if you want to buy your seasoned King's tickets, do
it now. I just traded for Wayne Gretzky. The price
is going to go up next week. To be polite
to the viewer, I asked a few questions, but frankly,
the story was pretty stupid. This was the second week
of August nineteen eighty eight, and there was a lot
of talk that the Edmonton Oilers, We're going to trade
(31:04):
Wayne Gretzky, the most famous player in hockey, and there
was nearly as much talk that that trade would send
him to us in LA. But the owner of the
Kings just telling passers by at random in a golf
clubhouse that he had just made the trade. I was
suspicious that I was being pranked. Fifteen minutes later, my
(31:28):
phone rang again. Hi, I'm a big fan of yours
and I watch every night. Here we go again. I
was just having lunch with a friend of mine out
here at the golf course in bel Air, And in
like an hour later, freaking Bruce McNall shows up in
the dining room and asks for everybody's attention, and he
says he's just completed the deal for Wayne Gretzky. And
and now I was beginning to get actually worried. I
(31:51):
was a lame duck as the sports director of Channel
five in Los Angeles, and four months there had been
rumors that I was moving down the street to Channel
two in Los Angeles. There had been these rumors mostly
because I was moving down the street to Channel two.
The deal had been done months earlier. We were going
to announce it that week. In fact, as these two
guys called in I had actually been busily packing up
(32:14):
my Channel five office. My thought now was that the
sportscaster at the local NBC station, who had a bit
of a substance problem and a nasty temper and a
real dislike for the fact that I was nearly as
popular as he was, was setting me up. I had
once managed to mislead him into thinking we were about
(32:34):
to break a story about a big LA football trade.
There was no breaking story because there was no trade,
and he had actually mentioned it on the air, having
clearly stolen it from me because I was the one
who had made it up. And oh was he furious
at me? For all I knew he wanted to embarrass
me three weeks before I moved into direct competition with
(32:55):
him at five, six and eleven. This August eighth, nineteen
eighty eight was in fact my first day back after
I had burned all my Channel five vacation time, And
for all I knew, this guy at NBC had been
having his staffers call me for a week with made
up sightings of McNall confirming a Gretzky trade that frankly
I never believe was going to happen. I mean not
(33:16):
to get two sidetracked here. But one day my phone
rang and it was a kid who said, I'm mister Oberman.
I'm sorry, but I'm a finalist to be an intern
here at Channel four for Fred Rogan, and mister Rogan
says I can have the spot, but only if I
call you up right now and say I'm sorry. If
I call you up and I tell you to go
f yourself, the kid did not say f To his credit,
(33:40):
he used his real name, Bill Weir. He later became
a sportscaster for the third Network station in LA, then
a correspondent for ABC and now CNN and I have
not let a year go by since without reminding him
of his f yourself internship phone call. He said life
paid him back by making him work with the guy
(34:01):
for several months. Anyway, back to Gretzky Night, two supposed
listeners have called to say that Bruce McNall, the owner
of the La Kings, is apparently trapsing through golf locker
rooms and dining rooms at country clubs to tell them
he has completed a trade for the babe Ruth of hockey,
Wayne Gretzky. And they're calling me because they like me
(34:21):
I'm suspicious, And now the phone rings again. This guy
was playing golf at the La Country Club. Same story. McNall,
by your kream's tickets. No, I just got Gretzky. The
next caller had been at yet a fourth club. I
think will share or something. If this was at prank,
it was a big one, and bluntly I had begun
(34:42):
to admire it. Finally came a fifth call. You don't
known me, but I watch you every night. I stumbled
onto a story. I think you'll want to run tonight.
I said, which golf course were you at? And he said,
excuse me. I was in my office all day, and
so was my missus. She's on the phone with me.
She works for Bruce McNall, the Kings. This time I
(35:05):
grabbed a pencil, honey, why don't you take it from here?
And she did. She worked in the finance office and
she had, literally, she said, just made out a check
for fifteen million dollars to the owner of the Edmonton Oilers,
Peter Pocklington. She said, and the note memo, were you white?
Write what it's for? I was told to put in
Wayne Gretzky. She also had seen the trade contract identified
(35:30):
the players that Kings were going to give up with
the fifteen million to get Gretzky. They were Jimmy Carson
and Martin Zellela. There were also draft choices, but she
didn't know or didn't remember the specifics of which ones. Now, breathless,
I asked her if I could call her back through
the switchboard of the LA Forum where the Kings and
McNall's offices were, just to confirm she was who she
(35:52):
said she was. She said I could, I did, she was.
I believe. In fact, she turned out to be the
only person on the McNall financial team that did not
get charged with something. So now I went in to
talk to my news director and to the producer of
our newscast. We were not on until ten PM. It
was now about seven. They were very excited, and they
(36:12):
said that given that I had exact details from a
King's source, plus the four witnesses to the owner of
the team shooting off his big bazoo at every golf
course he could reach, that we should run it, and
that we should run it as the lead news story
right at the start of the newscast that night, which
we did. The Kings would not confirm it, obviously, but
(36:34):
as soon as I got off the air with my
sportscast the second time I reported this story, a reporter
from the Associated Press was on the phone asking me
to read him my script, which he then quoted word
for word and put out on their sportswire. It was
on the back page of the New York Post. The
next day, my friends called me from New York to say, Hey,
(36:55):
your sportscast is on the back page of the New
York Post along with this big picture of Wayne Gretzky.
The leak caused the Kings to move up the announcement
of the deal from their original plan, which was Thursday
the eleventh, to the next night, Tuesday the ninth. A
King's vice president told me at the press conference that
the Oilers were in rage because they had wanted to
(37:16):
hold off until the eleventh because the deadline for their
season ticket holders to get their deposits back were Wednesday
the tenth. The Kings were nice enough to let me
of all the TV guys interviewed Gretzky First Live, and
I congratulated Wayne on the move, and he actually congratulated
me on the scoop, and I said I didn't do
anything but answer the phone, and he thought about it
(37:37):
for a second and said pretty much the same for me,
and we've been friendly ever since. But the laziest scoop
of all time did eventually come back with a sting
for me and some payback. A year later, we all
submitted our best stories for consideration for the local Emmy
for Best TV Sports Reporting for the calendar year nineteen
(37:57):
eighty eight. I submitted Surprise, Surprise, the Gretzky scoop. The
Emmys were always judged by a committee of television types
from a different city, so he didn't have that home
la Bias. And the guy from NBC, who I had
first thought was pranking me about the Gretzky story, had
somehow found out that the Emmys for nineteen eighty eight
(38:18):
would be judged in nineteen eighty nine in Ohio. In Columbus, Ohio,
I think. So he managed to get an interview with
MORGANA the Kissing Bandit, who was this scantily clad bucksom
woman you may remember, who in the old days of innocence,
used to bribe her way onto Major League Baseball fields
and bounce out onto the plate or the mound, and
(38:40):
she'd go and kiss stars like George Brett and Nolan
Ryan during games. Morgana. Morgana Roberts lived near Columbus, Ohio,
so sure enough, at the Emmy's the next year, my
exclusive report of the trade of Hockey's greatest player, Wayne
Gretzky was one of the finalists for the Los Angeles
Best TV Sports Reporting Emmy. But in the ceremony, and
(39:04):
it was at Old Landmark Hotel in Pasadena, they showed
clips of all the pieces that were finalists and then
announced that the winner was Fred Rogan k NBC. For
being chased by Morgana the Kissing bandit, my agent stood
up and booed. My girlfriend punched me in the arm
(39:25):
and said, let's get out of here and go drinking.
We left. I've done all the damage I can do here.
Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of
(39:47):
the music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray
and John Philip Channel, who are the Countdown musical directors.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitars based
and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers, and
the mystery villain was Wayne Gretzky. Other Beethoven selections have
been arranged and performed by No horns allowed. The sports
(40:09):
music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and it
was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments from Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was John Deane. Everything else is pretty
much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the eight
hundred and seventh day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest
(40:32):
him now while we still can, or if it's already
happened as you listen to this, arrest him again while
we still can. The next schedule countdown is tomorrow, So
until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(40:59):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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