April 24, 2023 • 54 mins
EPISODE 185: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Rupert Murdoch PERSONALLY fired Tucker Carlson over ex-Carlson producer Abby Grossberg's lawsuit for harassment, abuse, sexism, and misogyny. Murdoch also felt crossed by Carlson in many of the texts and emails produced by discovery in the Dominion lawsuit, but the firing was NOT a part of the settlement. There were also questions about impending lawsuits against Fox and Carlson by Smartmatic and Ray Epps.
But this was about how women were called the c-word in Carlson's office and how producers held a vote on which candidate for Governor of Michigan was more "f-able" and more might have come out if the Dominion case had gone to trial. There is a line, even at Fox (ask Bill O'Reilly or Roger Ailes). And Carlson found it and crossed it.
And take it from somebody who was himself fired personally by Murdoch. Tucker was FIRED PERSONALLY BY MURDOCH.
Don Lemon was also fired for misogyny, though it appears CNN actually gave him some time in hopes that his crass comments about Nikki Haley and when women were or weren't in their prime might fade in the background they didn't.
Still, this is a time to rejoice and wallow neck high in our schadenfreude! Let's SING SING SING!
NOTE. THE B AND C BLOCKS ARE REPEATED FROM THIS MORNING'S EDITION OF COUNTDOWN (EPISODE 184)
B-Block (23:31) WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A nice racism tie between basketball's Phil Jackson and NC Lt. Governor Mark Robinson (who wants his fellow African-Americans to PAY reparations), Senator Hawley and his tiny manhood, and of course Elon Musk, who over the subject of checkmarks just Blue himself. BREAKING NEWS: NBC fires my lying ex-friend Jeff Shell as CEO - for lying. Deadline.Com reports he had an affair with a CNBC Correspondent, Hadley Gamble - the woman Russian state TV once accused of trying to distract Vladimir Putin with her "sex appeal" - and compared her to Sharon Stone CROSSING HER LEGS IN BASIC INSTINCT. I'm so full of Schadenfreude I actually sing "The Ode To Joy" in the original German.
C-Block (38:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Tobias in California. (39:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If the Shell news isn't fun enough, CNN and Chris Licht make his biggest mistake yet. There are nine laws of cable TV news and the new Gayle King/Charles Barkley show will violate ALL NINE OF THEM.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
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. Make
No Mistake. Tucker Carlson was just fired personally by Rupert Murdoch.
(00:28):
The phrase breaking news has been overused beyond all recognition,
but this defines it breaking news and news broken. Tucker
Carlson has been fired by Fox and Rupert Murdoch and
the news site Semaphores as his executive producer. Justin Wells
has also been fired by Fox, and Don Lemon has
been fired by CNN. And as to Carlson, Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
(00:50):
Free at last. And Carlson was fired for two reasons,
one larger than the other because of what the Abbey
Grosberg misogyny and abuse lawsuit would reveal, and because of
what the dominion lawsuit prove Tucker Carlson had already said
about Fox management, including Rupert Murdoch, who just personally fired
(01:13):
Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson was fired because he somehow found
the line at an endemically sexist, abusive place like News Corp.
And still managed somehow to cross that line. There are
tipping points for crap like this, even at Fox. Ask
Bill O'Reilly ask Roger Ales, and I think ask Tucker Carlson,
(01:37):
and he trashed his bosses in black and white. He
may have trash Murdoch. He certainly trash Murdoch's most devoted aids.
And you do not cross Rupert Murdoch within News Corp
and long survive. And you can be certain he was
fired because the Murdoch statement does not say he was fired.
It reads only Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have
(01:58):
agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service.
He agreed to part way in exactly the manner CEO
Jeff Schell agreed to depart and BC yesterday they said
you're leaving, and the other guy said, okay. I mean
when Fox fired me from its sports department in two
(02:20):
thousand and one, it gave me a more fulsome farewell
statement than Carlson just got. It even included quotes from
me thanking my staff, and they gave me all the
money they owed me. And there are clear indications Rupert
does not intend to pay Tucker Carlson. The part about
firing his executive producer also gives more juice to the
(02:41):
explanation that this is mostly about that Abby Grosberg suit.
And while on Twitter this morning, I joked about Carlson's
firing and said that I did nazee this coming. Kind
of did. When the opening of the Dominion trial was
postponed by a day last week, I guessed here that
Dominion had even more eye popping evidenced against Fox, and
(03:02):
that could very well have been about Carlson, and it
could very well have been the result of the more
recent Grosberg suit. And now we are over the target.
To quote what I said on this podcast, somewhere there
was something else in the pile of items produced in Discovery,
something Dominion new it had, or something Dominion did not
know it had, that Fox suddenly knew Dominion had something
(03:23):
worse than Carlson saying he hated Trump, something worse than
all the executives threatening all the reporters who tried to
tell the truth, something that might have destroyed, if not
Fox itself, then a significant chunk of its franchise in
one fell swoop. Anyway, I still think there is still
some fatal there there. I'm actually not fond of quoting myself,
(03:46):
but a week ago tomorrow I kind of predicted which
part of the Fox franchise a Dominion trial might have
jeopardized quote Hannity is hateful, garbage, and Ingram hasn't been
all there since nine to eleven. But I can't imagine
there's anything by them or about them that could sink Fox,
Quote News, or Murdoch or just their own shows. But
(04:08):
Tucker Carlson, every night that eight o'clock comes around and
we do not hear a voiceover announcer say Tucker Carlson
Tonight won't be seen ever again because of the you know,
we now welcome back Bill oh Riley. I'm surprised any
of us who ever worked with Tucker Carlson believed he
(04:28):
did not have skeletons in his closet. He had a
whole house made of nothing but closets. End quote, Tucker
Carlson Tonight won't be seen ever again because of the
you know lost in the understandable focus on the parts
of ex Carlson producer Grosberg's lawsuit that implicated Fox in
(04:50):
the Dominion scandal was the second part of her complaint
that got Tucker Carlson fired today that as a woman
at Fox, she was subjected to quote vile sexist stereotypes,
especially after she was moved from the Maria Bartiromo Show
to the Tucker Carlson Show. In her suit, she says
that the day she started on Carlson's show, her office
(05:13):
was plastered with images of Nancy Pelosi quote in a
plunging bathing suit revealing her cleavage. Grosberg also claimed that
before Michigan's Republican candidate for governor, Tutor Dixon, appeared on
their show in October last year, Carlson participated in a
mock debate in his office with his staff over whether
(05:33):
Dixon or the incumbent governor, Grettin Gretchen Whitmer was quote
hotter and more effable. This debate was moderated by Carlson's
editorial producer Andrew Carmichael, who made several sexist remarks about
the two women's appearance and even polled the office on
their views. The same offensive discussion resurfaced when miss Dixon
(05:55):
joined the show again weeks later. End quote. In these discussions,
no woman, whether she was a Republican politician or a
female staffer at Fox News, was safe from suddenly becoming
the target of sexist, demeaning comments, such as being called
a C word. Fox has had to pay, and pay
(06:19):
and pay for what O'Reilly did, what Ales did to
Gretchen Carlson, to Andrea Macris, to dozens of other women,
And you will recall Carlson's comments on a shock jock
radio show from two thousand and six through twenty eleven,
full of misogyny and underaged sex jokes and tinged with
(06:39):
racism and the not so funny frat boy humor that
has defined his fifty three years on this earth as
the kind of immature predator you often read about in
the newspapers under the heading will he be tried as
a child or as an adult? And let me quote
also from something buried deep in a New York Times
report after the settlement about how Dominion's attorney had planned
(07:02):
to begin his opening statement a week ago tomorrow. Quote,
a presentation of roughly sixty slides had been loaded into
the courtroom's audio visual system, some containing new damning revelations
from the private communications inside Fox new damning inside, more sexism,
(07:25):
more misogyny, an assault. Who knows. Maybe that's why Rupert
paid it off. Maybe that's why Rupert fired Tucker, and
ultimately Tucker. Carlson's firing is actually about the dominion suit,
but not in the way one might first assume. The
(07:45):
texts and emails in the dominion suit. Discovery that we
saw also revealed a world in which Flatley Tucker Carlson
believed he ran Fox News and everybody else, including management,
including Murdoch, was there to do his bidding. There is
a very powerful News Corp. Executive vice president named Arena Briganti.
She has been there forever she used to do pr
(08:07):
for Fox News. She is as foul a human being
as I have ever encountered in this business. And Dominion
revealed an exchange between Carlson and Laura Ingram about the
debunking of the Trump lies about the twenty twenty election,
the debunkings they were so offended by. She is coordinating this.
(08:28):
Ingram texted Carlson about Briganti. Carlson replied, quote without question,
Irena hates prime Time. Trust me, that's not speculation. End quote.
That tension between the executives and the quote unquote real
newspeople on the one hand and the primetime opinion hosts
on the other is constant and wearying and eternal in
(08:51):
cable news, no matter the decade, no matter the venue,
and it always ends the same way, with the opinion
hosts losing because they may make more money for management,
but they also produce more headaches, and they produce all
the lawsuit and all the in person complaints. Presumably there
was more evidence of Carlson slamming his bosses, maybe even
(09:13):
Murdoch himself in print or just in conversation, to say
nothing of the misogyny and the Grosberg issues. And remember
this management in television will always protect management. Then I've
often told the story of when I worked at Fox
and developed a sourced story that Rupert Murdoch was going
(09:34):
to sell the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, and nobody
knew this. I did not know if I could report it.
It was Fox's candy store. It was their right to
tell me I could not report it on their network.
So I called Murdoch's personal PR unit, and those guys said, yes,
you can report it. We don't interfere if you think
it's the real story, as long as you run our
(09:56):
denial and as long as you make it clear the
story is not coming from inside the company or the corporation.
And I did all that, and the denial and the
disclaimer was twice as long as the story, and two
weeks later I was fired, And ten years later Rupert
Murdoch confirmed he had fired me personally because he was
(10:16):
so angry that I had revealed his secrets, even though
I had followed his rules and asked before every step
I took, and Tucker Carlson has not followed Rupert Murdoch's rules.
I am not defending Murdoch. I am just here to
explain him. In addition to that, a month ago, yesterday,
(10:39):
the attorney for Ray Epps, the man the right wing
has universally smeared as some kind of FBI plant slash provocateur,
on January sixth, wrote to Carlson demanding a retraction. The
lawyer asked for a retraction for his quote false and
defamatory statements, insisted on a quote formal on air apology
for the lies spread about mister Epps by others and
(11:02):
Carlson on Fox. Quote the fans notions that mister Carlson
advances on his show regarding mister EPP's involvement in the
January sixth insurrection are demonstrably and already proven to be false.
And yet mister Carlson persists with his assault on the
truth and if there are any other minor components to
this necessary. It's noteworthy too that Carlson's January sixth video
(11:26):
blockbuster charade with Kevin McCarthy blew up, but it blew
up mostly in his own face. In addition to producing
so little actual video of any interest to anybody whatsoever
that he had to reuse most of it on two
or three different shows, Carlson used some of it to
smear this EPs. As late as last week, Carlson also
(11:47):
made reference on air to how many people did not
believe that the twenty twenty election was legitimate, exactly the
kind of playing with fire that got Fox sued by Dominion,
Smart Mattic, probably by Ray Epps, and definitely by Abby Grosberg.
Last part, No, Tucker Carlson was not fired as part
(12:07):
of the dominion settlement. Dominion didn't even get a retraction,
let alone an apology or firings. What occurred in discovery
for the Dominion lawsuit is a big part of this,
But do not fall for that logical fallacy B followed A,
therefore a cause B. Whatever the ultimate nuances proved to
(12:28):
be Tucker Carlson has now completed an epic hat trick,
fired by CNN after John Stewart humiliated him during a
two thousand and four episode of Crossfire, fired by MSNBC
in two thousand and eight after his audience shrank to
a number smaller than his staff, and fired by Fox
in twenty twenty three by Rupert Murdoch. Personally, I'll put
(12:55):
my early money on the Grosberg suit and women and
misogyny and the insults to Murdoch and his favorites, and
then also that Fox eternal question, why are we in
this guy thirty million a year when we can get
Pete Hegseth or Jesse Waters or Deucey Junior to be
just as stupid and just as racist for a tenth
(13:15):
of that as to Don Lemon. Also misogyny. This is
not complicated. It may also have been planned to some degree.
Lemon was the most obvious face of the old sort
of liberal CNN. John Malone and Chris Lick took over
and decided to destroy, and the first thing they did
was to move Lemon from a solo show in primetime
(13:37):
where he was doing just fine getting along with his
favorite person himself to the disaster area that has been
CNN Mornings since the day we signed the place on
the air in nineteen eighty. CNN Mornings is where CNN
careers go to die. They once tried me as the
CNN Morning host I was often at work six months later.
(13:58):
Mornings are tough. You do not sleep, You do not
imprint anything in your memory. You don't remember what happened
five days ago or five seconds ago. Words come out
of your mouth before you realize you even thought of them.
In Lemon's case, he said appalling things about Nicki Haley
and women and when women were and were not in
(14:19):
their prime. And he said less appalling things about the
co hosts, and Don Lemon is the kind of talent
who should never have co hosts. He said less appalling
things about those two nitwits they had co anchoring with him,
people whose nit wittedness transcend gender. But they still were
misogynistic and indefensible. I actually think Chris Lichten CNN may
(14:42):
have given Lemons some time in hopes that the Nicky
Haley women's prime story would not stick to him the
way his bizarre assertion last decade on CNN did not
stick to him, He said that the missing Malaysian airliner
might have been swallowed by a black hole, just one
airplane by a black hole, as opposed to a black
(15:06):
hole which would consume every planet from here to Andromeda. Well,
the insults to women did stick, and Don Lemon is gone,
Having unwittingly helped lickt dismantle CNN in the process, Lemon
tweeted his dismissal this morning. He then complained he was
informed by his agent that he was terminated, and he writes,
(15:27):
I would have thought that someone in management would have
had the decency to tell me directly in a rare
post firing spat that doesn't involve me. CNN now denies this.
It issued a statement that he was offered an opportunity
to meet with management, but instead released a statement on Twitter.
The meeting offer is in itself unusual. It's unfortunate Lemon
(15:49):
turned it down. If CNN is telling the truth, it
is Chris licked. After all, most people leave fired when
a contract runs out, even on good terms, even on
their terms when they wanted to leave. However, you leave
a television network, you are not told by your boss.
You are told by your agent that is why you
(16:10):
have an agent I do not expect Rupert Murdoch called
up Tucker Carlson and fired him directly. Maybe he had
a reign of Briganti do it. The rest of this
updated podcast was recorded last night. It has the other
CNN disaster, the new Charles Barkley Gaale King Show, Would
(16:33):
you do Mornings? Guys? And it has worse persons in
the world, and most especially it has what was the
big shocking firing and TV. Anybody remember this? It happened
all the way back glass yesterday. My old ex friend
Jeff Schell, who had lied to me about bringing back countdown,
lied for two years or lied to me about lying
(16:54):
to me about bringing back countdown. He was fired over
an illicit relationship with a woman, reportedly a CNBC anchor
whom Russian state media wants aecuted us to flirting, flirting
with Vladimir Putin and resembling Sharon Stone in the leg
crossing scene in the movie Basic Instinct. Jeff Shells was
(17:17):
the most shocking firing in TV for twenty four hours.
If there's anybody celebrating today's news about Tucker Carlson and
Don Lemon, it's the folks at NBC Comcast. But lastly,
the big picture of today's shocking developments, Tucker Carlson is
off our televisions for now at least Fox may find
(17:40):
somebody worse they always have, but for now, at least
for today, for this week, for this month, Fox has
toppled one of the heroes of the fascist, racist right
wing as surely as they pulled down the statue of
Sadam Hussein in Iraq. It is useful to try to
understand why this happened, and I hope I've helped to
(18:02):
explain it. Rupert Murda fired him any other questions, because
really this is a time to celebrate, to dance, to sing,
to exult in our shoten Freud, so Oh, Nancy Ride
(18:28):
s got food.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Talk on our s m Fbraton for your drunkenly sa
dinerom dinso Been dun feed blast mood and got and
(18:56):
manchon Bell dn froyd bode Son top.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Free, don't Kanante Faust still ahead on this initiative countdown.
(19:24):
It is hard to believe that his spaceship could blow
up and his car company could lose a quarter of
its value, and neither would be the low point of
his week the Twitter Blue check fiasco, or, to steal
the line from Arrested Development, how Elon Musk blew himself
speaking of desperately bad businessmen. Saturday, my old colleague Chris
(19:46):
Licktive CNN, the presumed paced theater, makes his worst programming
decision ever. Okay, I got it. We'll hire Gail King
and Charles Barkley and we'll put them on one show
and we'll call it Charles King. Now. Wait, maybe there's
a better name somewhere. Wait, give me a day or
some Oh. While I was still chortling about that yesterday,
(20:10):
the man who misled me about taking me back to
MSNBC for two years and then basically told reporters while
Keith tradef no and I was lying is fired as
the CEO of NBC for lying and having an extra
marital relationship inside NBC. There's so much Shoden Freud this week.
I will actually sing for you the Shodenfreud song. That's next.
(20:34):
This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still
(20:57):
ahead on an all new edition of Countdown, The Shoden
Freud is Special featuring a disastrous new show at CNN
under Chris Licked and the ouster of the CEO of
NBC who lied to me for having an extra marital
affair inside the company about which he also lied allegedly
with an on air reporter. This is so much fun.
(21:18):
I'm actually going to sing the Shodenfreud a song, the
Ode to Joy first time for the daily round up
of the miss Grants, Morons and Dunning Krueger of X
Specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world. I
got a tie here for the bronze between Mark Robinson,
the Lieutenant governor of North Carolina now running for governor,
and Phil Jackson, legendary basketball coach about whom there've always
(21:40):
been racism, rumbles and mumbles. Jackson first, he has revealed
in a podcast that he stopped watching the NBA during
the playoff bubble of twenty twenty because the league supported
Black Lives Matter. They even heard slogans on the floor
in the baseline. He said, it was trying to cater
to an audience or trying to bring in a certain
(22:01):
audience to the game, and they didn't know it was
turning other people off. Un Quote. NBA rosters Phil are
now eighty percent black, which is where they were basically
when you were a coach. Maybe just work with me here, Phil.
Maybe it mattered to the players, and even to the
players who weren't black. Maybe it really just mattered to
people then, and the people who dismissed it as quote
(22:24):
politics were just finding an excuse for their own racism.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Phil.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Meanwhile, he's tied with Lieutenant Governor Robinson, who is African
American but desperately attempting not to be, at least for
the sake of the Republican Party. Robinson repeated to a
North Carolina GOP meeting that American blacks are not owed
reparations for slavery. Instead, he thinks American blacks owe reparations
for freedom. What Robinson didn't know was, as he said this,
he stood behind a podium that was supposed to say
(22:52):
NC GOP, But the NC and the OP were in black,
and the G was inside a red star, and the
prongs of the star stuck out and covered the opening
in the sea, So the sign seemed to read no GOP.
You got that right, Mark the runner up, Missouri Senator
Josh Hawley. That book, he said, was being censored and
(23:14):
canceled just because he shot a clenched fist of support
to the January sixth mob that was about to overtake
the Capitol. Oh, it will be out on May sixteenth.
That got published anyway, and it's titled Manhood. That's two words,
one printed on top of the other on a red
on red cover. It's twenty four dollars and ninety cents
for Josh Hawley's Manhood. That's the not really hardcover edition obviously,
(23:41):
but our winner, Elon Muskie. Where do we begin? The
blue check mark fiasco. NBC News reports there were four
hundred and twenty thousand legacy blue check marks issued to
prevent impersonation and scamming. The number of those people who
signed up for the eight dollars vanity blue check marks
was nineteen four hundred ninety seven. Basically, twenty one thousand
(24:05):
did four hundred thousand didn't. The number of legacies who
signed up as the legacy marks were disappearing twenty eight
two eight against the deadline. A Twitter source supposed to
reveal the number of Vanity Blues who signed up in
total for the final twenty four hours was four hundred.
Musk apparently tried to make light of this. At first,
(24:26):
he took three celebrities who questioned the process and said
he was personally buying Twitter Blue for them, William Shatner,
Stephen King, and Lebron. James King and Lebron said no thanks. Instantly,
the blue check mark became not a status symbol, not
like it was before. It was an anti theft device before,
not a status symbol instead, now it's a scarlet letter,
(24:48):
only only blue. It's a blue scarlet letter. And then
at this point panic apparently set in in musk Land.
On Saturday, blue check marks reappeared for every Twitter user
with more than a million followers, complete with the the
explanation on each user's homepage that they had paid for
Twitter Blue and had provided a phone number, which they didn't.
(25:12):
And it's not just cheesy, but under Section forty three
A of the Lanham Act that is illegal. It's called
false endorsement, and it's defined as anything quote likely to
confuse consumers as to the plaine of sponsorship or approval
of the product. In short, any account with more than
a million followers that now has a blue check market
(25:32):
didn't pay for can now sue Elon Musk for false endorsement.
Of course, this gets even worse. There are countless Twitter
accounts with more than a million followers, even though the
celebrity whose account it was is now sadly dead, so
that Twitter and Musk are now claiming that Pele brought
bought Twitter blue, and Anthony Bourdain bought Twitter blue and
(25:54):
Kobe Bryant, and especially problematic given Musks Saudi investors in Twitter,
Twitter is now claiming that Jamal Kashogi has bought Twitter Blue.
Happily for the living who did not buy it, there
is a way out if you got it. If you've
got one of these vanity blues, you can make it
disappear simply by altering your name or your avatar photo.
(26:14):
You may have to do it more than once. But
sue Elon first, because he sure did it. He went
and blew himself Elon plas some wag on Twitter said,
the vanity blue check mark now seems to be compensation
for guys who have small penises. Okay, the wag was
me Musk two days worst worse than the line. And
(26:51):
now to the number one story on the countdown, And
there's so many things I promise not to tell. It's
going to take the rest of the show two segments.
There's the latest news of Chris Licked. His latest solution
to CNN's free fall is a weekly news show with
Gail Kate and Charles Barkley. And they announced it Saturday,
even though they have no idea when it's going to start.
(27:11):
Had that not been funny enough, news broke yesterday and
was expanded upon late last night that my former friend
of twenty years, Jeff Shell, had been fired as the
CEO of NBC Universal Chairman of NBC Gone and rarely
nobody saw it coming. Went off like an atomic bomb
at every goddamn NBC affiliate from Albuquerque to Sandusky. Jeff Shell,
(27:35):
who misled me from literally the night the story of
his getting the NBC CEO job broke in December twenty
nineteen through September twenty twenty one, misled me that he
wanted to bring me and count down back to MSNBC,
that we needed to keep fighting to find a way
to make it happen, and then had one of his
lackeyes tell me after two years of this that Rachel
(27:57):
Maddow has vetoed it. And then when I told this
story publicly, Shell had one of the NBC news pr
flunkies say there had never been any real interest in
bringing me back, and that in essence, I should have
known Jeff Shell was lying to meet all that time.
In other words, the chairman of NBC was lying to
you for two years. You should have known that. That
(28:17):
is not the flex that NBC thought it was. However,
apparently it was foreshadowing. Yesterday, Shell wrote a brief note
emailed throughout NBC Television and the rest of the company,
explaining he was truly sorry for an inappropriate relationship with
a woman, and this was his last day at the company.
(28:37):
There was some kind of complaint, There was a quick investigation,
and then it was mutually decided that Shell and NBC
should part ways, which means it was mutually decided you're
effing fired. And then late last night came the second
nuclear detonation of the day at NBC. The Hollywood website
Deadline is reporting quote multiple sources tell Deadline that the
(29:01):
woman who filed the complaint against NBC Universal CEO jeffsha
for inappropriate conduct was CNBC anchor and senior international correspondent
Hadley Gamble unquote. This would be the same Hadley Gamble,
who interviewed Vladimir Putin, the Dictator of Russia, on stage
(29:22):
at Russian Energy Week, in a panel in twenty twenty
one while wearing a very tight black dress. She was
wearing the dress, not Putin, and then cameras caught Putin
making goofy faces at her, and then Russian state media
came out with the story claiming she had been sent
there as a sex object to distract Putin quote like
(29:43):
she was in the movie Nine and a Half Weeks
or basic instinct, and Russian state media invoked the Sharon's
stone leg crossing scene about Hadley Gamble. Back to the
Deadline story quote. Deadline has learned that Shell had a
relationship with Gamble, which started about eleven years ago and
continued sporadically up until a couple of year years ago,
(30:05):
when it ended. The complaint was lodged within the past months,
Deadline has learned the matter went all the way to
Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts, through the proper channels,
and was handled expediently. Sources said the outside law firm
hired to investigate delivered their findings to top Comcast Brass
within the past week we here and then comes the
(30:27):
real kicker in the Deadline story quote. Deadline has learned
that there was communication between Shell and Gamble via company email,
which came to light in the investigation. Woh by, So
the chairman of NBC was what sending emails inside the
(30:49):
NBC email system to his ex lover, a reporter for CNBC,
inside the company system after the relationship ended, and he
was asking for what, So you're saying, maybe you should
have known? I was lying, saying, wasn't just used on
me my favorite boss, my true friend, friend at Fox
(31:11):
Sports in nineteen ninety nine, in two thousand, who stayed
in touch, who moved on to Comcast, and when Comcast
was buying NBC, reappeared in my life to try to
talk me out of leaving my show on MSNBC. He
said he would fix everything because when Comcast took over,
he would be in charge of NBC cable stations. Probably
shouldn't have been saying that Comcast execs were under strict
(31:31):
instructions not to intervene in day to day operations at
NBC before they actually closed the sale. But what am I?
The Federal Trade Commission? And then he lied to me
for two years, or he lied about lying to me.
Oh now he's lying about this Hadley gamble, and they
fired him for it. That's a shame. One PostScript to this,
(31:56):
the Wall Street Journal suggests one of the candidates to
replace Shell is Caesar Conde, chairman of NBC News. He
was the guy Shell wanted me to meet to discuss
the return of Countdown, how to make it happen, And
one day early in twenty twenty one, this Conde invited
me to breakfast. A few days later, his assistant then
called to find an appropriate quiet restaurant nearby where we
(32:17):
could meet. We found one, we arranged it, it was
all set, and thirty minutes later she called back and
canceled the breakfast because suddenly he says, our Conde was
going to be out of town for a week. Oh,
we do it whenever he got back, which apparently he
never has, because the next thing was the statement about
how I should have known Jeff Schell was lying constantly.
And if it sounds like I am having waiting too
(32:39):
much shot and fry to fun, it's because I'm sitting here,
stamping my feet, having wait too much shot and fryer fun.
So much fun. I feel like bursting out in song
Oh Nancy.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Right, for talk on Our Left and for drunken Resha
Dinom Dizoa in Don fed Last Mood, Tha gotar Avang
(33:26):
and Bell din broy bold spree, don't Conanti Faust and
I'll just leave you with this.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
The happy gamble didn't pay off, and she has left
Jeff the shell of his former self still ahead on Countdown,
(34:05):
Part two of things I Promised not to tell And
it was a big weekend for people who don't like
people I don't like. There are nine rules of cable news,
and CNN's new Charles Barkley Gail King Show violates all
nine of them. First, in each tradition of Countdown, we
feature a dog in need you can help. Every dog
has its day. Tobias is an eight year old husky mix,
(34:28):
a handsome white and creamy tan fella. He has soulful eyes.
He has not been taken care of by a human
in years, and understandably, he has trust issues with people,
and he's on the kill list in the high kill
shelter at DeVore, California, and he desperately needs out and fast.
He needs a foster in the area. He needs our
(34:48):
pledges to help defray the costs of a rescue to
get him out and train him before they kill him.
You can find Tobias on my Twitter feeds. And as always,
if you pledge and we don't save him, you're under
no obligation. On the other hand, with your help, we
might save him. I thank you and Tobias thanks year.
(35:24):
And as promised to two topical editions and things I
promised not to tell Jeff Shell gone at NBC and
at CNN, Chris Licht stepped one another rake and soon
or late one of these rakes will be his last.
Lickt has gone ahead and done it. He will premiere
(35:47):
a show about news, co hosted by Charles Barkley, who
has never done a news show before, and Gail King,
who has never been on a successful news show before.
It will be once a week, starting sometime in the
near future, we think on one of seven possible nights
to be determined, and they've announced it now. This is
(36:11):
the genius of Chris licked in action again. And when
I say genius, of course, I mean when we were
at MSNBC together we all thought Chris Lickt eight paste.
There are nine fundamental rules of cable TV news, and
this idea violates all nine of them. Here they are
Number one, don't mistake friends of yours for universally popular
(36:32):
television people. Number two. Remember that, no matter how big
the ratings, last place in the ratings is still last place.
Number three. Remember that whatever somebody's ratings are over there,
that does not mean that they will get those same
ratings over here. Number four. Remember the law of the
day part number five. Remember news viewers actually don't want
(36:57):
pop culture figures or sportscasters giving their opinions on the news.
I know what you're saying. I'm going into detail on
this in a little bit. Number six. You may think
cable viewers want neutral, non ideological balance shows, but there's
only about just this scant twenty five years worth of
(37:18):
data proving that no, no, they do not want neutral,
non ideological balance shows at all. Number seven, once a
week on cable news might as well be once a year.
Number eight. If you have reasonably made a bad, big mistake,
recognize it and do not repeat it. And number nine,
(37:39):
do not do not pick a cute title for a show,
especially if it is a play on the name of
the host or the hosts okay, one by one. Number one,
don't mistake friends of yours for universally popular TV figures
or talent. I got nothing against Gail King. She is
a very nice lady. I knew her so long ago
(38:01):
that when we met, I was just starting at SportsCenter
and she was a local newscaster in Hartford, Connecticut. Then
she had an NBC talk show canceled, She had a
syndicated talk show canceled, She had a show on Oprah's
network canceled. Other jobs at XM Radio, at ABC News
not one success. Then she went to work at CBS
(38:22):
under Chris lickt Now, if you're Chris licked, you have
to recognize the first say, six failures out of six
tries are more important than your successful friendship. You do
not say of a Gail King Charles Barkley show, as
Licht actually did last week on the record quote, wouldn't
that be a fun show to watch? Wouldn't you watch
that show? I would watch that no matter what network
(38:43):
go was on. If that's the methodology here, guess what, Chris,
You will soon get plenty of time to watch any show,
no matter what network it's on. Number two, Remember that
last place is still last place. I know that the
CBS morning show she is now on is the best
last place show of all the dozens of different last
(39:06):
place shows CBS has produced in the mornings over the decades,
dating back to nineteen fifty four, when it was Walter
Cronkite and a puppet co hosting the morning news, and
most relevantly, this show was the last news program that
CNN's new boss had anything to do with, And Gail
King is thus one of only four or five people
in the news business he knows the first thing about.
(39:28):
But it's still a last place show. The ratings from
the week before last, people who chose to watch a
network morning show and chose the one Gail King is
on two point two million, people who chose one of
the ones Gail King is not on five point nine million.
Law three. Remember that whatever somebody's ratings are over there
(39:51):
does not mean they're going to get those same ratings
over here. An average of million, two hundred and eighty
four thousand people watched Gail King's show on CBS week
before last, the most recent day we have of cable
news ratings. There's a April twentieth two million, two hundred
and sixty eight thousand people watch CNN between seven pm
and midnight total. For twenty years, CNN has been relentlessly
(40:16):
advertising and promoting and pushing Anderson Cooper, who has an
even higher profile job at CBS than King does. For
twenty years, he's been pushed. Cooper's CBS show is sixty
minutes and it gets roughly seven and a half million
viewers an episode. His CNN show gets five hundred thousand viewers.
His CNN show gets seven and a half percent the
(40:38):
ratings of his CBS show. If that number holds up
for Gail King, her CNN show will get one hundred
and seventy one thousand viewers. That's like a third of
what CNN is getting right now in primetime. Yet somebody
at CNN is saying this will be our breakthrough show.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Four.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Remember the Law of the Day part Early on the
mo ing A, February twenty second, two thousand and five,
the President of CBS Less Moonbez and the president of
CBS News Andrew Heyward sneaked into my apartment building. There
had been a late hitch in their plan to hire
Katie kirk Away from the Today Show, which was on
in the mornings, to make her the anchor of the
CBS Evening News, which was on, as their clever title implied,
(41:24):
in the evenings. Now, these guys were confident they could
get around that hitch, but they had no backup plan,
and they decided really kind of at the last minute.
I was the backup plan. Now, apart from my what
the hell, let me tell you what I really think, pitch,
I mean, my odds getting the job are about one
in one thousand, I asked them before you signed, Katie Kirk,
(41:44):
have you considered the possibility that being a successful co
host of a morning show might not translate into being
a successful sole anchor of the CBS Evening News, which
is on in the evenings. Have you considered what we
called in radio day parts. It's not the same job.
It's not what people know. I know her for morning
(42:05):
shows are interviews, Evening newses are reading teleprompter and then
getting on a plane for Afghanistan. It's not what people
watch her for. And Les Moonvez said, but she's a star.
And I said, let me just tell you precisely how
it matters that what time somebody is on is bigger
than whether or not they're star. When I was a
(42:26):
local sportscaster in LA, Channel five, we did the ten
o'clock news, so I came on about ten to fifty
every night. I was I've got to use the word,
I was beloved. The ratings went up at ten fifty
every night. It was the only newscast in a major
city in America where the ratings went up when the
sports guy came on. Naturally, I got hired away by
another station, your station last Channel two in LA. They
(42:49):
got paid seven times when I was making and we
did the eleven o'clock news. So I came on not
at ten fifty, but at eleven thirty every night, and
I was hated. None of the viewers got my jokes.
Nobody liked me anymore. They hated me, and I was shocked.
My bosses were shocked, and their bosses were shocked. And
then they spent a shocked fortune on research to figure
(43:12):
out why it didn't work. And they came back and
they said, look, the evidence is overwhelming. All the people
who loved this guy's sportscasts apparently had the jobs where
they had to be in the office at seven or
eight in the morning because the whole East coast West
coast thing, and they were literally staying up as late
as they could to watch them at ten fifty. When
you put him on at eleven thirty, all the people
(43:33):
who liked him are asleep less andy, I said, ten
fifty pm and forty minutes later at eleven thirty pm,
they are different day parts. And if ten fifty pm
at eleven thirty pm are different day parts, then seven
am and six thirty pm are completely different day parts.
(43:56):
They didn't listen. I didn't expect them to. They hired
Katie Kirk who was a morning success and was a
nighttime disaster, and now CNN one to hire a morning
not success and put her on at night. So what
could possibly go wrong here? Back to our laws Number five,
news viewers actually do not want pop culture figures or
(44:19):
sportscasters giving their opinions on the news. I don't have
stats on this. I just again have my own experience
when I was a news commentator on MSNBC and had
as a sideline co host of an hour of Dan
Patrick's ESPN radio show and then co host a Football
Night in America on NBC. That was fine. Keep the
politics out of the sportscast, and nobody cares if you
(44:40):
do both the sportscast and the newscast. But anytime I
was perceived as a sportscaster giving opinions on the news,
like when I first left ESPN to go to MSNBC
and then when I left Fox Sports to become a
news anchor at CNN, big trouble. Viewers could accept the
change and even the overlap from news to sports, but
(45:02):
from sports to news, particularly commentary, It's going to take
a year two, maybe maybe three before viewers will accept
Charles Barkley, will take him seriously, and in the interim
what could also happen is he could really tarnish his
sports brand. Six. You may think cable viewers want neutral,
(45:26):
non ideological, balance shows, but there's only about twenty five
years of data proving, oh, they don't. Pre Chris licked,
CNN was not purely ideological, but nobody watching thought they
were piously neutral, especially not about Chump the new fascist
owners and licked promise to return to the old CNN
whatever that was. What they got was hemorrhage. CNN's ratings
(45:48):
for the first quarter of this year are down thirty
four percent from the first quarter of twenty twenty two.
As the announcement was made, Barkley promised his show would
not lean any one way politically, and I in turn
promise that whatever the audience size is on week one,
he really does that and remains neutral. His audience size
(46:09):
will be thirty four percent smaller on week two. Seven
Once a week on cable news might as well be
once a year. No once a week show has ever
succeeded in cable news. I was there when it started.
CNN later tried a rotation of five once a week
(46:32):
shows in primetime in the late nineties and promptly lost
its ratings monopoly. Every network has tried them except Fox.
MSNBC is trying it now with Rachel Maddow and the
ratings are really disturbing. Before she cut back to Monday's
only her high watermark ratings like the old saw Goes
were the rising tide that lifted all boats. Last Monday
(46:54):
at nine PM a week ago, she drew two hundred
and thirty five thousand viewers in the advertising demo, which
is very good these days. The show before her at
one hundred and forty seven thousand. The show after her
had one hundred and forty one thousand. In other words,
about ninety thousand additional demo viewers showed up just for
Meadows once a week show, and then they went away.
(47:15):
They stopped watching MSNBC. So they are paying and maybe
this had something to do with Jef Shell getting fired.
They are paying Rachel Maddow thirty one million dollars a
year to get an additional ninety thousand viewers a week.
In fact, that may be generous the rest of the
week when it's not her in the nine pm slot.
(47:37):
The nine pm slot average one hundred and seventy nine
thousand demo viewers. They may be paying Rachel thirty one
million dollars a year for only fifty six thousand viewers
above average a week. And the ratings at eight pm
and ten pm were higher on the nights she wasn't
on on nine PM compared to those when she was.
(48:01):
It is a maxim of cable news. Nobody is going
to watch your net work on nights you are not on,
just because they want to say thank you to your employer.
Even if everything I'm saying about Barkley and King is wrong.
Shows that are on once a week do not help
the other shows on your cable news network. You want
to succeed based on a bunch of shows that are
on once a week, you're gonna need about twenty eight
(48:24):
really good once a week shows, and that's just for
prime time. Law eight of the nine. If you've recently
made a bad mistake, recognize it and don't repeat it.
Chris Lick's last brainstorm was to go big, to hire
a big name to appear once a week, to take
what was previously the online only supplement to Bill Maher's
(48:48):
show on HBO and put it on live on Friday
nights on CNN. Friday the seventeenth, two hundred and seventy
seven thousand viewers Every other hour that night on MSNBC
and Fox had at least one million viewers. Bill Maher
two hundred and seventy seven thousand, two hundred and seventy
seven thousand viewers is about at the point where you
(49:11):
have to consider whether it's worth paying for all that
electricity required to link the studio and the last rule
Rule nine. Do not pick a cute title for a show,
especially if it is a play on the name of
the host or hosts. People don't believe this today. But
as I've mentioned before, Tucker Carlson used to work at
(49:31):
MSNBC had his own primetime show, and as a favor
to a friend, I served as the liberal foil to
Tucker Carlson for a few demo pilot shows, and at
some point the former CNN president, the one who tried
the five nights a week with once a week shows
he was then running MSNBC, Rick Kaplan. He saw these
demos and he liked the interplay, probably because I was
(49:56):
just saying whatever I could say to get me off
the stage the fastest, so I go back to my
office and write my show. So Kaplan approached me with
a offer. He would tear up my contract. He would
give me a huge raise if I would do Countdown
and stick around until eleven o'clock every night and co
host co host with Tucker Carlson. It would be perfect,
(50:16):
he said, because he could combine our initials and give
the show the greatest name in cable news history, TKO.
The content of the show it's feasibility, and this did
not matter to him. What he was in love with
was the title, TKO. It's perfect, the name of the
(50:37):
new Charles Barkley Gale King show. It leaves me wondering
if Chrislick actually did this, if he actually developed not
a show, but a title for a show. Charles Barkley's
nickname is King Charles. So let's see, he can't host
it by himself. He doesn't even host his own basketball
show by him so he needs a co host he needs.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
I got it.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
It's perfect. He needs somebody named King. That way, the
title of the show be King Charles. Let's see who
can we get? Stephen King? No, he'll never do it.
Nose eyebrows, scare children. Larry King, No, no, sadly no,
he's gone. Now. Oh look, if anybody could come back
to do a new show, it would be Larry Now
(51:21):
King Wally from Sportsphone. Now he's the PA announcer for
the Knicks, right, so he's got a larger audience every night. Wait,
I got it, Gail King, King Charles get it. Isn't
that clever? I would watch that no matter what network
goes on, so it couldn't be worse. Actually I'm wrong
(51:41):
about that. The show could have been called King Charles,
and it could have three hosts, Gail King, Charles Barkley,
and King Charles of Great Britain. Okay, so Jeff Shell's gone,
(52:09):
Chris Lick closer to his end. Ha ha, I have
done all the damage I can do here well almost.
Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of
the music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray
and John Phillip Shaneil. They are the Countdown musical directors.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanelle, Guitars, bass
(52:31):
and drums by Brian Ray, produced by TKO Brothers. Other
Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Aloud.
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy of
ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball
stadium organist ever and our announcer today was John Dean.
Everything else pretty much Michault. So that's countdown for this,
(52:53):
the eight hundred and thirty ninth days since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government in the
United States. Don't forget keep arresting him while we still can.
The next scheduled Countdown is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith Olderman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
Speaker 2 (53:23):
Ride a show lot, food talk on our s, arm FB,
Trapton for Your Drunken SA died from diveso in Don
(53:45):
feed bast mood, Tha got a bench and fell, Don
Broyd Bode Sun Top three.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Don't Can. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production 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. Make
No Mistake. Tucker Carlson was just fired personally by Rupert Murdoch.
(00:28):
The phrase breaking news has been overused beyond all recognition,
but this defines it breaking news and news broken. Tucker
Carlson has been fired by Fox and Rupert Murdoch and
the news site Semaphores as his executive producer. Justin Wells
has also been fired by Fox, and Don Lemon has
been fired by CNN. And as to Carlson, Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
(00:50):
Free at last. And Carlson was fired for two reasons,
one larger than the other because of what the Abbey
Grosberg misogyny and abuse lawsuit would reveal, and because of
what the dominion lawsuit prove Tucker Carlson had already said
about Fox management, including Rupert Murdoch, who just personally fired
(01:13):
Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson was fired because he somehow found
the line at an endemically sexist, abusive place like News Corp.
And still managed somehow to cross that line. There are
tipping points for crap like this, even at Fox. Ask
Bill O'Reilly ask Roger Ales, and I think ask Tucker Carlson,
(01:37):
and he trashed his bosses in black and white. He
may have trash Murdoch. He certainly trash Murdoch's most devoted aids.
And you do not cross Rupert Murdoch within News Corp
and long survive. And you can be certain he was
fired because the Murdoch statement does not say he was fired.
It reads only Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have
(01:58):
agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service.
He agreed to part way in exactly the manner CEO
Jeff Schell agreed to depart and BC yesterday they said
you're leaving, and the other guy said, okay. I mean
when Fox fired me from its sports department in two
(02:20):
thousand and one, it gave me a more fulsome farewell
statement than Carlson just got. It even included quotes from
me thanking my staff, and they gave me all the
money they owed me. And there are clear indications Rupert
does not intend to pay Tucker Carlson. The part about
firing his executive producer also gives more juice to the
(02:41):
explanation that this is mostly about that Abby Grosberg suit.
And while on Twitter this morning, I joked about Carlson's
firing and said that I did nazee this coming. Kind
of did. When the opening of the Dominion trial was
postponed by a day last week, I guessed here that
Dominion had even more eye popping evidenced against Fox, and
(03:02):
that could very well have been about Carlson, and it
could very well have been the result of the more
recent Grosberg suit. And now we are over the target.
To quote what I said on this podcast, somewhere there
was something else in the pile of items produced in Discovery,
something Dominion new it had, or something Dominion did not
know it had, that Fox suddenly knew Dominion had something
(03:23):
worse than Carlson saying he hated Trump, something worse than
all the executives threatening all the reporters who tried to
tell the truth, something that might have destroyed, if not
Fox itself, then a significant chunk of its franchise in
one fell swoop. Anyway, I still think there is still
some fatal there there. I'm actually not fond of quoting myself,
(03:46):
but a week ago tomorrow I kind of predicted which
part of the Fox franchise a Dominion trial might have
jeopardized quote Hannity is hateful, garbage, and Ingram hasn't been
all there since nine to eleven. But I can't imagine
there's anything by them or about them that could sink Fox,
Quote News, or Murdoch or just their own shows. But
(04:08):
Tucker Carlson, every night that eight o'clock comes around and
we do not hear a voiceover announcer say Tucker Carlson
Tonight won't be seen ever again because of the you know,
we now welcome back Bill oh Riley. I'm surprised any
of us who ever worked with Tucker Carlson believed he
(04:28):
did not have skeletons in his closet. He had a
whole house made of nothing but closets. End quote, Tucker
Carlson Tonight won't be seen ever again because of the
you know lost in the understandable focus on the parts
of ex Carlson producer Grosberg's lawsuit that implicated Fox in
(04:50):
the Dominion scandal was the second part of her complaint
that got Tucker Carlson fired today that as a woman
at Fox, she was subjected to quote vile sexist stereotypes,
especially after she was moved from the Maria Bartiromo Show
to the Tucker Carlson Show. In her suit, she says
that the day she started on Carlson's show, her office
(05:13):
was plastered with images of Nancy Pelosi quote in a
plunging bathing suit revealing her cleavage. Grosberg also claimed that
before Michigan's Republican candidate for governor, Tutor Dixon, appeared on
their show in October last year, Carlson participated in a
mock debate in his office with his staff over whether
(05:33):
Dixon or the incumbent governor, Grettin Gretchen Whitmer was quote
hotter and more effable. This debate was moderated by Carlson's
editorial producer Andrew Carmichael, who made several sexist remarks about
the two women's appearance and even polled the office on
their views. The same offensive discussion resurfaced when miss Dixon
(05:55):
joined the show again weeks later. End quote. In these discussions,
no woman, whether she was a Republican politician or a
female staffer at Fox News, was safe from suddenly becoming
the target of sexist, demeaning comments, such as being called
a C word. Fox has had to pay, and pay
(06:19):
and pay for what O'Reilly did, what Ales did to
Gretchen Carlson, to Andrea Macris, to dozens of other women,
And you will recall Carlson's comments on a shock jock
radio show from two thousand and six through twenty eleven,
full of misogyny and underaged sex jokes and tinged with
(06:39):
racism and the not so funny frat boy humor that
has defined his fifty three years on this earth as
the kind of immature predator you often read about in
the newspapers under the heading will he be tried as
a child or as an adult? And let me quote
also from something buried deep in a New York Times
report after the settlement about how Dominion's attorney had planned
(07:02):
to begin his opening statement a week ago tomorrow. Quote,
a presentation of roughly sixty slides had been loaded into
the courtroom's audio visual system, some containing new damning revelations
from the private communications inside Fox new damning inside, more sexism,
(07:25):
more misogyny, an assault. Who knows. Maybe that's why Rupert
paid it off. Maybe that's why Rupert fired Tucker, and
ultimately Tucker. Carlson's firing is actually about the dominion suit,
but not in the way one might first assume. The
(07:45):
texts and emails in the dominion suit. Discovery that we
saw also revealed a world in which Flatley Tucker Carlson
believed he ran Fox News and everybody else, including management,
including Murdoch, was there to do his bidding. There is
a very powerful News Corp. Executive vice president named Arena Briganti.
She has been there forever she used to do pr
(08:07):
for Fox News. She is as foul a human being
as I have ever encountered in this business. And Dominion
revealed an exchange between Carlson and Laura Ingram about the
debunking of the Trump lies about the twenty twenty election,
the debunkings they were so offended by. She is coordinating this.
(08:28):
Ingram texted Carlson about Briganti. Carlson replied, quote without question,
Irena hates prime Time. Trust me, that's not speculation. End quote.
That tension between the executives and the quote unquote real
newspeople on the one hand and the primetime opinion hosts
on the other is constant and wearying and eternal in
(08:51):
cable news, no matter the decade, no matter the venue,
and it always ends the same way, with the opinion
hosts losing because they may make more money for management,
but they also produce more headaches, and they produce all
the lawsuit and all the in person complaints. Presumably there
was more evidence of Carlson slamming his bosses, maybe even
(09:13):
Murdoch himself in print or just in conversation, to say
nothing of the misogyny and the Grosberg issues. And remember
this management in television will always protect management. Then I've
often told the story of when I worked at Fox
and developed a sourced story that Rupert Murdoch was going
(09:34):
to sell the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, and nobody
knew this. I did not know if I could report it.
It was Fox's candy store. It was their right to
tell me I could not report it on their network.
So I called Murdoch's personal PR unit, and those guys said, yes,
you can report it. We don't interfere if you think
it's the real story, as long as you run our
(09:56):
denial and as long as you make it clear the
story is not coming from inside the company or the corporation.
And I did all that, and the denial and the
disclaimer was twice as long as the story, and two
weeks later I was fired, And ten years later Rupert
Murdoch confirmed he had fired me personally because he was
(10:16):
so angry that I had revealed his secrets, even though
I had followed his rules and asked before every step
I took, and Tucker Carlson has not followed Rupert Murdoch's rules.
I am not defending Murdoch. I am just here to
explain him. In addition to that, a month ago, yesterday,
(10:39):
the attorney for Ray Epps, the man the right wing
has universally smeared as some kind of FBI plant slash provocateur,
on January sixth, wrote to Carlson demanding a retraction. The
lawyer asked for a retraction for his quote false and
defamatory statements, insisted on a quote formal on air apology
for the lies spread about mister Epps by others and
(11:02):
Carlson on Fox. Quote the fans notions that mister Carlson
advances on his show regarding mister EPP's involvement in the
January sixth insurrection are demonstrably and already proven to be false.
And yet mister Carlson persists with his assault on the
truth and if there are any other minor components to
this necessary. It's noteworthy too that Carlson's January sixth video
(11:26):
blockbuster charade with Kevin McCarthy blew up, but it blew
up mostly in his own face. In addition to producing
so little actual video of any interest to anybody whatsoever
that he had to reuse most of it on two
or three different shows, Carlson used some of it to
smear this EPs. As late as last week, Carlson also
(11:47):
made reference on air to how many people did not
believe that the twenty twenty election was legitimate, exactly the
kind of playing with fire that got Fox sued by Dominion,
Smart Mattic, probably by Ray Epps, and definitely by Abby Grosberg.
Last part, No, Tucker Carlson was not fired as part
(12:07):
of the dominion settlement. Dominion didn't even get a retraction,
let alone an apology or firings. What occurred in discovery
for the Dominion lawsuit is a big part of this,
But do not fall for that logical fallacy B followed A,
therefore a cause B. Whatever the ultimate nuances proved to
(12:28):
be Tucker Carlson has now completed an epic hat trick,
fired by CNN after John Stewart humiliated him during a
two thousand and four episode of Crossfire, fired by MSNBC
in two thousand and eight after his audience shrank to
a number smaller than his staff, and fired by Fox
in twenty twenty three by Rupert Murdoch. Personally, I'll put
(12:55):
my early money on the Grosberg suit and women and
misogyny and the insults to Murdoch and his favorites, and
then also that Fox eternal question, why are we in
this guy thirty million a year when we can get
Pete Hegseth or Jesse Waters or Deucey Junior to be
just as stupid and just as racist for a tenth
(13:15):
of that as to Don Lemon. Also misogyny. This is
not complicated. It may also have been planned to some degree.
Lemon was the most obvious face of the old sort
of liberal CNN. John Malone and Chris Lick took over
and decided to destroy, and the first thing they did
was to move Lemon from a solo show in primetime
(13:37):
where he was doing just fine getting along with his
favorite person himself to the disaster area that has been
CNN Mornings since the day we signed the place on
the air in nineteen eighty. CNN Mornings is where CNN
careers go to die. They once tried me as the
CNN Morning host I was often at work six months later.
(13:58):
Mornings are tough. You do not sleep, You do not
imprint anything in your memory. You don't remember what happened
five days ago or five seconds ago. Words come out
of your mouth before you realize you even thought of them.
In Lemon's case, he said appalling things about Nicki Haley
and women and when women were and were not in
(14:19):
their prime. And he said less appalling things about the
co hosts, and Don Lemon is the kind of talent
who should never have co hosts. He said less appalling
things about those two nitwits they had co anchoring with him,
people whose nit wittedness transcend gender. But they still were
misogynistic and indefensible. I actually think Chris Lichten CNN may
(14:42):
have given Lemons some time in hopes that the Nicky
Haley women's prime story would not stick to him the
way his bizarre assertion last decade on CNN did not
stick to him, He said that the missing Malaysian airliner
might have been swallowed by a black hole, just one
airplane by a black hole, as opposed to a black
(15:06):
hole which would consume every planet from here to Andromeda. Well,
the insults to women did stick, and Don Lemon is gone,
Having unwittingly helped lickt dismantle CNN in the process, Lemon
tweeted his dismissal this morning. He then complained he was
informed by his agent that he was terminated, and he writes,
(15:27):
I would have thought that someone in management would have
had the decency to tell me directly in a rare
post firing spat that doesn't involve me. CNN now denies this.
It issued a statement that he was offered an opportunity
to meet with management, but instead released a statement on Twitter.
The meeting offer is in itself unusual. It's unfortunate Lemon
(15:49):
turned it down. If CNN is telling the truth, it
is Chris licked. After all, most people leave fired when
a contract runs out, even on good terms, even on
their terms when they wanted to leave. However, you leave
a television network, you are not told by your boss.
You are told by your agent that is why you
(16:10):
have an agent I do not expect Rupert Murdoch called
up Tucker Carlson and fired him directly. Maybe he had
a reign of Briganti do it. The rest of this
updated podcast was recorded last night. It has the other
CNN disaster, the new Charles Barkley Gaale King Show, Would
(16:33):
you do Mornings? Guys? And it has worse persons in
the world, and most especially it has what was the
big shocking firing and TV. Anybody remember this? It happened
all the way back glass yesterday. My old ex friend
Jeff Schell, who had lied to me about bringing back countdown,
lied for two years or lied to me about lying
(16:54):
to me about bringing back countdown. He was fired over
an illicit relationship with a woman, reportedly a CNBC anchor
whom Russian state media wants aecuted us to flirting, flirting
with Vladimir Putin and resembling Sharon Stone in the leg
crossing scene in the movie Basic Instinct. Jeff Shells was
(17:17):
the most shocking firing in TV for twenty four hours.
If there's anybody celebrating today's news about Tucker Carlson and
Don Lemon, it's the folks at NBC Comcast. But lastly,
the big picture of today's shocking developments, Tucker Carlson is
off our televisions for now at least Fox may find
(17:40):
somebody worse they always have, but for now, at least
for today, for this week, for this month, Fox has
toppled one of the heroes of the fascist, racist right
wing as surely as they pulled down the statue of
Sadam Hussein in Iraq. It is useful to try to
understand why this happened, and I hope I've helped to
(18:02):
explain it. Rupert Murda fired him any other questions, because
really this is a time to celebrate, to dance, to sing,
to exult in our shoten Freud, so Oh, Nancy Ride
(18:28):
s got food.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Talk on our s m Fbraton for your drunkenly sa
dinerom dinso Been dun feed blast mood and got and
(18:56):
manchon Bell dn froyd bode Son top.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Free, don't Kanante Faust still ahead on this initiative countdown.
(19:24):
It is hard to believe that his spaceship could blow
up and his car company could lose a quarter of
its value, and neither would be the low point of
his week the Twitter Blue check fiasco, or, to steal
the line from Arrested Development, how Elon Musk blew himself
speaking of desperately bad businessmen. Saturday, my old colleague Chris
(19:46):
Licktive CNN, the presumed paced theater, makes his worst programming
decision ever. Okay, I got it. We'll hire Gail King
and Charles Barkley and we'll put them on one show
and we'll call it Charles King. Now. Wait, maybe there's
a better name somewhere. Wait, give me a day or
some Oh. While I was still chortling about that yesterday,
(20:10):
the man who misled me about taking me back to
MSNBC for two years and then basically told reporters while
Keith tradef no and I was lying is fired as
the CEO of NBC for lying and having an extra
marital relationship inside NBC. There's so much Shoden Freud this week.
I will actually sing for you the Shodenfreud song. That's next.
(20:34):
This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still
(20:57):
ahead on an all new edition of Countdown, The Shoden
Freud is Special featuring a disastrous new show at CNN
under Chris Licked and the ouster of the CEO of
NBC who lied to me for having an extra marital
affair inside the company about which he also lied allegedly
with an on air reporter. This is so much fun.
(21:18):
I'm actually going to sing the Shodenfreud a song, the
Ode to Joy first time for the daily round up
of the miss Grants, Morons and Dunning Krueger of X
Specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world. I
got a tie here for the bronze between Mark Robinson,
the Lieutenant governor of North Carolina now running for governor,
and Phil Jackson, legendary basketball coach about whom there've always
(21:40):
been racism, rumbles and mumbles. Jackson first, he has revealed
in a podcast that he stopped watching the NBA during
the playoff bubble of twenty twenty because the league supported
Black Lives Matter. They even heard slogans on the floor
in the baseline. He said, it was trying to cater
to an audience or trying to bring in a certain
(22:01):
audience to the game, and they didn't know it was
turning other people off. Un Quote. NBA rosters Phil are
now eighty percent black, which is where they were basically
when you were a coach. Maybe just work with me here, Phil.
Maybe it mattered to the players, and even to the
players who weren't black. Maybe it really just mattered to
people then, and the people who dismissed it as quote
(22:24):
politics were just finding an excuse for their own racism.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Phil.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Meanwhile, he's tied with Lieutenant Governor Robinson, who is African
American but desperately attempting not to be, at least for
the sake of the Republican Party. Robinson repeated to a
North Carolina GOP meeting that American blacks are not owed
reparations for slavery. Instead, he thinks American blacks owe reparations
for freedom. What Robinson didn't know was, as he said this,
he stood behind a podium that was supposed to say
(22:52):
NC GOP, But the NC and the OP were in black,
and the G was inside a red star, and the
prongs of the star stuck out and covered the opening
in the sea, So the sign seemed to read no GOP.
You got that right, Mark the runner up, Missouri Senator
Josh Hawley. That book, he said, was being censored and
(23:14):
canceled just because he shot a clenched fist of support
to the January sixth mob that was about to overtake
the Capitol. Oh, it will be out on May sixteenth.
That got published anyway, and it's titled Manhood. That's two words,
one printed on top of the other on a red
on red cover. It's twenty four dollars and ninety cents
for Josh Hawley's Manhood. That's the not really hardcover edition obviously,
(23:41):
but our winner, Elon Muskie. Where do we begin? The
blue check mark fiasco. NBC News reports there were four
hundred and twenty thousand legacy blue check marks issued to
prevent impersonation and scamming. The number of those people who
signed up for the eight dollars vanity blue check marks
was nineteen four hundred ninety seven. Basically, twenty one thousand
(24:05):
did four hundred thousand didn't. The number of legacies who
signed up as the legacy marks were disappearing twenty eight
two eight against the deadline. A Twitter source supposed to
reveal the number of Vanity Blues who signed up in
total for the final twenty four hours was four hundred.
Musk apparently tried to make light of this. At first,
(24:26):
he took three celebrities who questioned the process and said
he was personally buying Twitter Blue for them, William Shatner,
Stephen King, and Lebron. James King and Lebron said no thanks. Instantly,
the blue check mark became not a status symbol, not
like it was before. It was an anti theft device before,
not a status symbol instead, now it's a scarlet letter,
(24:48):
only only blue. It's a blue scarlet letter. And then
at this point panic apparently set in in musk Land.
On Saturday, blue check marks reappeared for every Twitter user
with more than a million followers, complete with the the
explanation on each user's homepage that they had paid for
Twitter Blue and had provided a phone number, which they didn't.
(25:12):
And it's not just cheesy, but under Section forty three
A of the Lanham Act that is illegal. It's called
false endorsement, and it's defined as anything quote likely to
confuse consumers as to the plaine of sponsorship or approval
of the product. In short, any account with more than
a million followers that now has a blue check market
(25:32):
didn't pay for can now sue Elon Musk for false endorsement.
Of course, this gets even worse. There are countless Twitter
accounts with more than a million followers, even though the
celebrity whose account it was is now sadly dead, so
that Twitter and Musk are now claiming that Pele brought
bought Twitter blue, and Anthony Bourdain bought Twitter blue and
(25:54):
Kobe Bryant, and especially problematic given Musks Saudi investors in Twitter,
Twitter is now claiming that Jamal Kashogi has bought Twitter Blue.
Happily for the living who did not buy it, there
is a way out if you got it. If you've
got one of these vanity blues, you can make it
disappear simply by altering your name or your avatar photo.
(26:14):
You may have to do it more than once. But
sue Elon first, because he sure did it. He went
and blew himself Elon plas some wag on Twitter said,
the vanity blue check mark now seems to be compensation
for guys who have small penises. Okay, the wag was
me Musk two days worst worse than the line. And
(26:51):
now to the number one story on the countdown, And
there's so many things I promise not to tell. It's
going to take the rest of the show two segments.
There's the latest news of Chris Licked. His latest solution
to CNN's free fall is a weekly news show with
Gail Kate and Charles Barkley. And they announced it Saturday,
even though they have no idea when it's going to start.
(27:11):
Had that not been funny enough, news broke yesterday and
was expanded upon late last night that my former friend
of twenty years, Jeff Shell, had been fired as the
CEO of NBC Universal Chairman of NBC Gone and rarely
nobody saw it coming. Went off like an atomic bomb
at every goddamn NBC affiliate from Albuquerque to Sandusky. Jeff Shell,
(27:35):
who misled me from literally the night the story of
his getting the NBC CEO job broke in December twenty
nineteen through September twenty twenty one, misled me that he
wanted to bring me and count down back to MSNBC,
that we needed to keep fighting to find a way
to make it happen, and then had one of his
lackeyes tell me after two years of this that Rachel
(27:57):
Maddow has vetoed it. And then when I told this
story publicly, Shell had one of the NBC news pr
flunkies say there had never been any real interest in
bringing me back, and that in essence, I should have
known Jeff Shell was lying to meet all that time.
In other words, the chairman of NBC was lying to
you for two years. You should have known that. That
(28:17):
is not the flex that NBC thought it was. However,
apparently it was foreshadowing. Yesterday, Shell wrote a brief note
emailed throughout NBC Television and the rest of the company,
explaining he was truly sorry for an inappropriate relationship with
a woman, and this was his last day at the company.
(28:37):
There was some kind of complaint, There was a quick investigation,
and then it was mutually decided that Shell and NBC
should part ways, which means it was mutually decided you're
effing fired. And then late last night came the second
nuclear detonation of the day at NBC. The Hollywood website
Deadline is reporting quote multiple sources tell Deadline that the
(29:01):
woman who filed the complaint against NBC Universal CEO jeffsha
for inappropriate conduct was CNBC anchor and senior international correspondent
Hadley Gamble unquote. This would be the same Hadley Gamble,
who interviewed Vladimir Putin, the Dictator of Russia, on stage
(29:22):
at Russian Energy Week, in a panel in twenty twenty
one while wearing a very tight black dress. She was
wearing the dress, not Putin, and then cameras caught Putin
making goofy faces at her, and then Russian state media
came out with the story claiming she had been sent
there as a sex object to distract Putin quote like
(29:43):
she was in the movie Nine and a Half Weeks
or basic instinct, and Russian state media invoked the Sharon's
stone leg crossing scene about Hadley Gamble. Back to the
Deadline story quote. Deadline has learned that Shell had a
relationship with Gamble, which started about eleven years ago and
continued sporadically up until a couple of year years ago,
(30:05):
when it ended. The complaint was lodged within the past months,
Deadline has learned the matter went all the way to
Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts, through the proper channels,
and was handled expediently. Sources said the outside law firm
hired to investigate delivered their findings to top Comcast Brass
within the past week we here and then comes the
(30:27):
real kicker in the Deadline story quote. Deadline has learned
that there was communication between Shell and Gamble via company email,
which came to light in the investigation. Woh by, So
the chairman of NBC was what sending emails inside the
(30:49):
NBC email system to his ex lover, a reporter for CNBC,
inside the company system after the relationship ended, and he
was asking for what, So you're saying, maybe you should
have known? I was lying, saying, wasn't just used on
me my favorite boss, my true friend, friend at Fox
(31:11):
Sports in nineteen ninety nine, in two thousand, who stayed
in touch, who moved on to Comcast, and when Comcast
was buying NBC, reappeared in my life to try to
talk me out of leaving my show on MSNBC. He
said he would fix everything because when Comcast took over,
he would be in charge of NBC cable stations. Probably
shouldn't have been saying that Comcast execs were under strict
(31:31):
instructions not to intervene in day to day operations at
NBC before they actually closed the sale. But what am I?
The Federal Trade Commission? And then he lied to me
for two years, or he lied about lying to me.
Oh now he's lying about this Hadley gamble, and they
fired him for it. That's a shame. One PostScript to this,
(31:56):
the Wall Street Journal suggests one of the candidates to
replace Shell is Caesar Conde, chairman of NBC News. He
was the guy Shell wanted me to meet to discuss
the return of Countdown, how to make it happen, And
one day early in twenty twenty one, this Conde invited
me to breakfast. A few days later, his assistant then
called to find an appropriate quiet restaurant nearby where we
(32:17):
could meet. We found one, we arranged it, it was
all set, and thirty minutes later she called back and
canceled the breakfast because suddenly he says, our Conde was
going to be out of town for a week. Oh,
we do it whenever he got back, which apparently he
never has, because the next thing was the statement about
how I should have known Jeff Schell was lying constantly.
And if it sounds like I am having waiting too
(32:39):
much shot and fry to fun, it's because I'm sitting here,
stamping my feet, having wait too much shot and fryer fun.
So much fun. I feel like bursting out in song
Oh Nancy.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Right, for talk on Our Left and for drunken Resha
Dinom Dizoa in Don fed Last Mood, Tha gotar Avang
(33:26):
and Bell din broy bold spree, don't Conanti Faust and
I'll just leave you with this.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
The happy gamble didn't pay off, and she has left
Jeff the shell of his former self still ahead on Countdown,
(34:05):
Part two of things I Promised not to tell And
it was a big weekend for people who don't like
people I don't like. There are nine rules of cable news,
and CNN's new Charles Barkley Gail King Show violates all
nine of them. First, in each tradition of Countdown, we
feature a dog in need you can help. Every dog
has its day. Tobias is an eight year old husky mix,
(34:28):
a handsome white and creamy tan fella. He has soulful eyes.
He has not been taken care of by a human
in years, and understandably, he has trust issues with people,
and he's on the kill list in the high kill
shelter at DeVore, California, and he desperately needs out and fast.
He needs a foster in the area. He needs our
(34:48):
pledges to help defray the costs of a rescue to
get him out and train him before they kill him.
You can find Tobias on my Twitter feeds. And as always,
if you pledge and we don't save him, you're under
no obligation. On the other hand, with your help, we
might save him. I thank you and Tobias thanks year.
(35:24):
And as promised to two topical editions and things I
promised not to tell Jeff Shell gone at NBC and
at CNN, Chris Licht stepped one another rake and soon
or late one of these rakes will be his last.
Lickt has gone ahead and done it. He will premiere
(35:47):
a show about news, co hosted by Charles Barkley, who
has never done a news show before, and Gail King,
who has never been on a successful news show before.
It will be once a week, starting sometime in the
near future, we think on one of seven possible nights
to be determined, and they've announced it now. This is
(36:11):
the genius of Chris licked in action again. And when
I say genius, of course, I mean when we were
at MSNBC together we all thought Chris Lickt eight paste.
There are nine fundamental rules of cable TV news, and
this idea violates all nine of them. Here they are
Number one, don't mistake friends of yours for universally popular
(36:32):
television people. Number two. Remember that, no matter how big
the ratings, last place in the ratings is still last place.
Number three. Remember that whatever somebody's ratings are over there,
that does not mean that they will get those same
ratings over here. Number four. Remember the law of the
day part number five. Remember news viewers actually don't want
(36:57):
pop culture figures or sportscasters giving their opinions on the news.
I know what you're saying. I'm going into detail on
this in a little bit. Number six. You may think
cable viewers want neutral, non ideological balance shows, but there's
only about just this scant twenty five years worth of
(37:18):
data proving that no, no, they do not want neutral,
non ideological balance shows at all. Number seven, once a
week on cable news might as well be once a year.
Number eight. If you have reasonably made a bad, big mistake,
recognize it and do not repeat it. And number nine,
(37:39):
do not do not pick a cute title for a show,
especially if it is a play on the name of
the host or the hosts okay, one by one. Number one,
don't mistake friends of yours for universally popular TV figures
or talent. I got nothing against Gail King. She is
a very nice lady. I knew her so long ago
(38:01):
that when we met, I was just starting at SportsCenter
and she was a local newscaster in Hartford, Connecticut. Then
she had an NBC talk show canceled, She had a
syndicated talk show canceled, She had a show on Oprah's
network canceled. Other jobs at XM Radio, at ABC News
not one success. Then she went to work at CBS
(38:22):
under Chris lickt Now, if you're Chris licked, you have
to recognize the first say, six failures out of six
tries are more important than your successful friendship. You do
not say of a Gail King Charles Barkley show, as
Licht actually did last week on the record quote, wouldn't
that be a fun show to watch? Wouldn't you watch
that show? I would watch that no matter what network
(38:43):
go was on. If that's the methodology here, guess what, Chris,
You will soon get plenty of time to watch any show,
no matter what network it's on. Number two, Remember that
last place is still last place. I know that the
CBS morning show she is now on is the best
last place show of all the dozens of different last
(39:06):
place shows CBS has produced in the mornings over the decades,
dating back to nineteen fifty four, when it was Walter
Cronkite and a puppet co hosting the morning news, and
most relevantly, this show was the last news program that
CNN's new boss had anything to do with, And Gail
King is thus one of only four or five people
in the news business he knows the first thing about.
(39:28):
But it's still a last place show. The ratings from
the week before last, people who chose to watch a
network morning show and chose the one Gail King is
on two point two million, people who chose one of
the ones Gail King is not on five point nine million.
Law three. Remember that whatever somebody's ratings are over there
(39:51):
does not mean they're going to get those same ratings
over here. An average of million, two hundred and eighty
four thousand people watched Gail King's show on CBS week
before last, the most recent day we have of cable
news ratings. There's a April twentieth two million, two hundred
and sixty eight thousand people watch CNN between seven pm
and midnight total. For twenty years, CNN has been relentlessly
(40:16):
advertising and promoting and pushing Anderson Cooper, who has an
even higher profile job at CBS than King does. For
twenty years, he's been pushed. Cooper's CBS show is sixty
minutes and it gets roughly seven and a half million
viewers an episode. His CNN show gets five hundred thousand viewers.
His CNN show gets seven and a half percent the
(40:38):
ratings of his CBS show. If that number holds up
for Gail King, her CNN show will get one hundred
and seventy one thousand viewers. That's like a third of
what CNN is getting right now in primetime. Yet somebody
at CNN is saying this will be our breakthrough show.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Four.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Remember the Law of the Day part Early on the
mo ing A, February twenty second, two thousand and five,
the President of CBS Less Moonbez and the president of
CBS News Andrew Heyward sneaked into my apartment building. There
had been a late hitch in their plan to hire
Katie kirk Away from the Today Show, which was on
in the mornings, to make her the anchor of the
CBS Evening News, which was on, as their clever title implied,
(41:24):
in the evenings. Now, these guys were confident they could
get around that hitch, but they had no backup plan,
and they decided really kind of at the last minute.
I was the backup plan. Now, apart from my what
the hell, let me tell you what I really think, pitch,
I mean, my odds getting the job are about one
in one thousand, I asked them before you signed, Katie Kirk,
(41:44):
have you considered the possibility that being a successful co
host of a morning show might not translate into being
a successful sole anchor of the CBS Evening News, which
is on in the evenings. Have you considered what we
called in radio day parts. It's not the same job.
It's not what people know. I know her for morning
(42:05):
shows are interviews, Evening newses are reading teleprompter and then
getting on a plane for Afghanistan. It's not what people
watch her for. And Les Moonvez said, but she's a star.
And I said, let me just tell you precisely how
it matters that what time somebody is on is bigger
than whether or not they're star. When I was a
(42:26):
local sportscaster in LA, Channel five, we did the ten
o'clock news, so I came on about ten to fifty
every night. I was I've got to use the word,
I was beloved. The ratings went up at ten fifty
every night. It was the only newscast in a major
city in America where the ratings went up when the
sports guy came on. Naturally, I got hired away by
another station, your station last Channel two in LA. They
(42:49):
got paid seven times when I was making and we
did the eleven o'clock news. So I came on not
at ten fifty, but at eleven thirty every night, and
I was hated. None of the viewers got my jokes.
Nobody liked me anymore. They hated me, and I was shocked.
My bosses were shocked, and their bosses were shocked. And
then they spent a shocked fortune on research to figure
(43:12):
out why it didn't work. And they came back and
they said, look, the evidence is overwhelming. All the people
who loved this guy's sportscasts apparently had the jobs where
they had to be in the office at seven or
eight in the morning because the whole East coast West
coast thing, and they were literally staying up as late
as they could to watch them at ten fifty. When
you put him on at eleven thirty, all the people
(43:33):
who liked him are asleep less andy, I said, ten
fifty pm and forty minutes later at eleven thirty pm,
they are different day parts. And if ten fifty pm
at eleven thirty pm are different day parts, then seven
am and six thirty pm are completely different day parts.
(43:56):
They didn't listen. I didn't expect them to. They hired
Katie Kirk who was a morning success and was a
nighttime disaster, and now CNN one to hire a morning
not success and put her on at night. So what
could possibly go wrong here? Back to our laws Number five,
news viewers actually do not want pop culture figures or
(44:19):
sportscasters giving their opinions on the news. I don't have
stats on this. I just again have my own experience
when I was a news commentator on MSNBC and had
as a sideline co host of an hour of Dan
Patrick's ESPN radio show and then co host a Football
Night in America on NBC. That was fine. Keep the
politics out of the sportscast, and nobody cares if you
(44:40):
do both the sportscast and the newscast. But anytime I
was perceived as a sportscaster giving opinions on the news,
like when I first left ESPN to go to MSNBC
and then when I left Fox Sports to become a
news anchor at CNN, big trouble. Viewers could accept the
change and even the overlap from news to sports, but
(45:02):
from sports to news, particularly commentary, It's going to take
a year two, maybe maybe three before viewers will accept
Charles Barkley, will take him seriously, and in the interim
what could also happen is he could really tarnish his
sports brand. Six. You may think cable viewers want neutral,
(45:26):
non ideological, balance shows, but there's only about twenty five
years of data proving, oh, they don't. Pre Chris licked,
CNN was not purely ideological, but nobody watching thought they
were piously neutral, especially not about Chump the new fascist
owners and licked promise to return to the old CNN
whatever that was. What they got was hemorrhage. CNN's ratings
(45:48):
for the first quarter of this year are down thirty
four percent from the first quarter of twenty twenty two.
As the announcement was made, Barkley promised his show would
not lean any one way politically, and I in turn
promise that whatever the audience size is on week one,
he really does that and remains neutral. His audience size
(46:09):
will be thirty four percent smaller on week two. Seven
Once a week on cable news might as well be
once a year. No once a week show has ever
succeeded in cable news. I was there when it started.
CNN later tried a rotation of five once a week
(46:32):
shows in primetime in the late nineties and promptly lost
its ratings monopoly. Every network has tried them except Fox.
MSNBC is trying it now with Rachel Maddow and the
ratings are really disturbing. Before she cut back to Monday's
only her high watermark ratings like the old saw Goes
were the rising tide that lifted all boats. Last Monday
(46:54):
at nine PM a week ago, she drew two hundred
and thirty five thousand viewers in the advertising demo, which
is very good these days. The show before her at
one hundred and forty seven thousand. The show after her
had one hundred and forty one thousand. In other words,
about ninety thousand additional demo viewers showed up just for
Meadows once a week show, and then they went away.
(47:15):
They stopped watching MSNBC. So they are paying and maybe
this had something to do with Jef Shell getting fired.
They are paying Rachel Maddow thirty one million dollars a
year to get an additional ninety thousand viewers a week.
In fact, that may be generous the rest of the
week when it's not her in the nine pm slot.
(47:37):
The nine pm slot average one hundred and seventy nine
thousand demo viewers. They may be paying Rachel thirty one
million dollars a year for only fifty six thousand viewers
above average a week. And the ratings at eight pm
and ten pm were higher on the nights she wasn't
on on nine PM compared to those when she was.
(48:01):
It is a maxim of cable news. Nobody is going
to watch your net work on nights you are not on,
just because they want to say thank you to your employer.
Even if everything I'm saying about Barkley and King is wrong.
Shows that are on once a week do not help
the other shows on your cable news network. You want
to succeed based on a bunch of shows that are
on once a week, you're gonna need about twenty eight
(48:24):
really good once a week shows, and that's just for
prime time. Law eight of the nine. If you've recently
made a bad mistake, recognize it and don't repeat it.
Chris Lick's last brainstorm was to go big, to hire
a big name to appear once a week, to take
what was previously the online only supplement to Bill Maher's
(48:48):
show on HBO and put it on live on Friday
nights on CNN. Friday the seventeenth, two hundred and seventy
seven thousand viewers Every other hour that night on MSNBC
and Fox had at least one million viewers. Bill Maher
two hundred and seventy seven thousand, two hundred and seventy
seven thousand viewers is about at the point where you
(49:11):
have to consider whether it's worth paying for all that
electricity required to link the studio and the last rule
Rule nine. Do not pick a cute title for a show,
especially if it is a play on the name of
the host or hosts. People don't believe this today. But
as I've mentioned before, Tucker Carlson used to work at
(49:31):
MSNBC had his own primetime show, and as a favor
to a friend, I served as the liberal foil to
Tucker Carlson for a few demo pilot shows, and at
some point the former CNN president, the one who tried
the five nights a week with once a week shows
he was then running MSNBC, Rick Kaplan. He saw these
demos and he liked the interplay, probably because I was
(49:56):
just saying whatever I could say to get me off
the stage the fastest, so I go back to my
office and write my show. So Kaplan approached me with
a offer. He would tear up my contract. He would
give me a huge raise if I would do Countdown
and stick around until eleven o'clock every night and co
host co host with Tucker Carlson. It would be perfect,
(50:16):
he said, because he could combine our initials and give
the show the greatest name in cable news history, TKO.
The content of the show it's feasibility, and this did
not matter to him. What he was in love with
was the title, TKO. It's perfect, the name of the
(50:37):
new Charles Barkley Gale King show. It leaves me wondering
if Chrislick actually did this, if he actually developed not
a show, but a title for a show. Charles Barkley's
nickname is King Charles. So let's see, he can't host
it by himself. He doesn't even host his own basketball
show by him so he needs a co host he needs.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
I got it.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
It's perfect. He needs somebody named King. That way, the
title of the show be King Charles. Let's see who
can we get? Stephen King? No, he'll never do it.
Nose eyebrows, scare children. Larry King, No, no, sadly no,
he's gone. Now. Oh look, if anybody could come back
to do a new show, it would be Larry Now
(51:21):
King Wally from Sportsphone. Now he's the PA announcer for
the Knicks, right, so he's got a larger audience every night. Wait,
I got it, Gail King, King Charles get it. Isn't
that clever? I would watch that no matter what network
goes on, so it couldn't be worse. Actually I'm wrong
(51:41):
about that. The show could have been called King Charles,
and it could have three hosts, Gail King, Charles Barkley,
and King Charles of Great Britain. Okay, so Jeff Shell's gone,
(52:09):
Chris Lick closer to his end. Ha ha, I have
done all the damage I can do here well almost.
Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of
the music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray
and John Phillip Shaneil. They are the Countdown musical directors.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanelle, Guitars, bass
(52:31):
and drums by Brian Ray, produced by TKO Brothers. Other
Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Aloud.
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy of
ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball
stadium organist ever and our announcer today was John Dean.
Everything else pretty much Michault. So that's countdown for this,
(52:53):
the eight hundred and thirty ninth days since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government in the
United States. Don't forget keep arresting him while we still can.
The next scheduled Countdown is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith Olderman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
Speaker 2 (53:23):
Ride a show lot, food talk on our s, arm FB,
Trapton for Your Drunken SA died from diveso in Don
(53:45):
feed bast mood, Tha got a bench and fell, Don
Broyd Bode Sun Top three.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Don't Can. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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