Keith Olbermann has announced his new show on Current TV will be called Countdown with Keith Olbermann and will start June 20. I hope that doesn't mean they're going to retain that odd format of opening with the #5 story (which was always the most important) and then working their way up to the #1 story, which was always the most trivial but they acted like it was the most important. Either way, I'll be watching, at least when it starts.
Apart from a few atypical "Special Comments" that went too far in outrage and insult, I never thought Mr. Olbermann was the Liberal equivalent of Hannity or Beck or even O'Reilly. For one thing, he did corrections. For another, I always believed that Olbermann was saying what he believed, whereas the other guys were saying what you had to say to work on Fox News. This is not to say they might not have believed it as well. I just think it's real easy to believe what the people paying you a lot of money want you to believe and sell. I also find Olbermann funny and witty at times.
There are things I don't like about Olbermann. I don't like when he goes over the top, though I do respect him for a few times when he did and then apologized. I don't like that a lot of his interviews sound very scripted with him feeding questions to a guest the way a lawyer feeds questions to a witness he's rehearsed. I like a lot of his "Worst Persons" commentaries but wish he'd just title the segment something like "Stupid Things That Prominent People and Reporters Have Said." And like you if you watch him at all, I turn him off when he starts to read Thurber. I can and do read Thurber to myself, Keith.
But I like that he's coming back and it'll be interesting to see if his presence on Current TV causes more cable systems to carry it. Howard Stern's move to Sirius Satellite Radio caused them to sell an awful lot of receivers and subscriptions — maybe not enough to justify his salary but a lot. Conan O'Brien's move to TBS seems to have helped that entire network somewhat if only because many people bothered to find out where TBS was on their dial. Current TV has been on my DirecTV satellite's lineup for some time but it's because of Olbermann that I found out it's Channel 358 and will be setting my first TiVo Season Pass to that station. Bet I'm not the only one.