There's not much to say about the content of Keith Olbermann's first telecast on Current TV. It was pretty much the same show, pretty much what we all expected. The only thing I heard that I might not have heard on his old MSNBC program was the claim of Liberal Activist Markos Moulitsas that he [Moulitsas] no longer appears on MSNBC because he ticked off Joe Scarborough…and Scarborough has the power to block guests from being on other hosts' shows. Olbermann concurred and he's obviously in a position to know. I would have liked though to hear Olbermann say whether he had (and if so, ever exercised) the power to block some guest from appearing on Scarborough's show.
My big complaint about the first Countdown was its length. About halfway through, Keith announced they'd be going past the hour mark…an announcement that was of no help to those of us watching the show via TiVo. We recorded for one hour and the show went about 64 minutes. Olbermann is today being criticized because that meant he cut into Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC. There are obviously folks out there who wanted to watch him then watch her and he made that difficult. Hey, never mind that. He made it impossible for some of us to watch the last four minutes of his show. Where is the upside for him in that?
I haven't bothered catching any of the replays and I wonder if they've been edited down or maybe even sped up or if they run 64 minutes. If so, how does that work with the other shows on the Current TV lineup which are all pre-filmed and an hour long and supposed to start on the hour? I think when Bill Maher's HBO show began, he occasionally ran over…but HBO has so much filler between some programs that it was probably easy to clear a few extra minutes for his initial transmission and then I believe they sped up or edited Maher's show for the rebroadcasts.
But I really don't get how this is good business for Olbermann to run over, making the show after his start later, screwing up anyone who records the show via DVR or VCR. If they want to make it difficult for people to tune over and watch Maddow, why don't they just officially make Olbermann's show 65 minutes long?