I took the day off. So, without any fanfare whatsoever, here's my big Sunday piece. Read it with my Shep Smith piece for maximum fairness and balance. The Olbermann article includes a sidebar on Bill O'Reilly's recent impersonation of Harvey Pekar.
Numbers look good for Keith Olbermann
If you know how many days it's been since George W. Bush put on a flight suit and claimed victory over Saddam Hussein in that photo op on the aircraft carrier, you're likely one of two things:
You're an obsessive hater of the president or a faithful viewer of "Countdown With Keith Olbermann." Or both.
The count-up has become a staple of Olbermann's nightly signoff. Here's the MSNBC newscaster ending his program Oct. 17: "That's 'Countdown' for this, the 1,263rd day since the declaration of 'Mission Accomplished' in Iraq."
On a good night "Countdown," which airs at 7 weeknights, averages 500,000 viewers. That's about a quarter of the audience for his nemesis Bill O'Reilly on Fox News Channel. But those tiny Nielsen ratings belie his growing influence.
"Countdown" is routinely beating its competition on CNN. Its audience is much younger than O'Reilly's. And while it's true that 24 programs on Fox News and CNN have better ratings than "Countdown," Olbermann is the biggest thing that perennial also-ran MSNBC has going.
Olbermann recently appeared on David Letterman's show, where he was treated kindly, not unlike a rising young comedian. O'Reilly, by contrast, got the grumpy old man treatment from Dave the following week (see box). Letterman has been a guide to unconventional journalists before: Michael Moore's early work was heavily influenced by Letterman's street theater. Now here is Olbermann, infusing his journalism with irony, much as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert infuse their irony with journalism over on Comedy Central.
Surveys find again and again that viewers younger than 30 watch almost no traditional news but eagerly tune in to "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report."
Some, like my colleague Tim Goodman at the San Francisco Chronicle, have even suggested that real newscasters save themselves by imitating fake newscasters: "You want a younger audience for network news? Drop the idea that it's gospel. Give everyone a wink and a tweak and a pinch. Feel free not only to raise an eyebrow or smirk but to outright scoff."
Keith Olbermann is, to date, the most perfect expression of that idea. As he continues to pick up steam - that he will pass CNN's Paula Zahn for second place at 7 p.m. seems inevitable - it's worth asking if his brand of journalism will be, and should be, the future of TV journalism.
He has been called a misunderstood visionary, a liar and the de facto voice of progressives and lefties in cable news. Three things are indisputable: Olbermann has a giant ego. He's finally found his voice with "Countdown," by far the best of the three shows he's done since leaving his job as ESPN "SportsCenter" anchor. And his bosses give him license to do things no other serious journo gets to do on TV.
Take his Oct. 27 obituary for the phrase "stay the course." Olbermann somberly reported that "the nation had (just) lost an old and honored friend." That "friend" was the Republican Party's mantra for the Iraq war. It died, he continued, when the president gave an interview over the weekend, insisting he had never urged "staying the course" in Iraq.
Olbermann played that sound bite, followed by one from White House press secretary Tony Snow, who said he "could only find eight instances" of the president actually saying "stay the course." What came next was delivered as deftly as anything Stewart and his comedy writers could have done.
Allowing himself just the slightest smirk, Olbermann observed that "the White House had relied on bad intelligence about - the White House." And then proceeded to play a quick-fire montage of sound bites: "We will stay the course We will stay the course We're just going to stay the course." In the corner of the screen, a counter (not unlike one David Letterman would use) kept score: 29 presidential stay-the-courses.
Launched in 2003, "Countdown" is Olbermann's second go at an MSNBC program. The first, "The Big Show," was consumed by the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998.
"Countdown" avoids that problem. It's organized around the "five stories you'll be talking about tomorrow," with none taking more than about five minutes of his time. That doesn't count his signature piece, "Worst Person in the World," a countdown-within-the-countdown of the three most outrageous - in his view - people in the news that day.
More often than not, the winner is a commentator on the right. After "comedian Rush Limbaugh" tried to backpedal on his earlier remarks about actor Michael J. Fox, Olbermann barked, "Rush, your lies used to be slightly entertaining, but no more" and added: "Please, go back on the drugs!"
Other recent comments have attacked the anti-terrorism bill for suspending habeas corpus, GOP political ads that use images of Osama bin Laden and the failure to recover dozens of bone fragments from the 9/11 attacks that had sat untouched under manhole covers for five years.
"You (Mr. Bush) can actually claim that you and you alone can protect us from terrorism?" fumed Olbermann, who says he lost several friends on 9/11. "You can't even recover our dead from the battlefield - the battlefield in an American city - when we've given you five years and unlimited funds to do so!"
What ought to give everyone pause about this melding of news and comment is that it occurs during the closest thing MSNBC has to a newscast of record. No one doubts that Bill O'Reilly is just venting his bottomless spleen. But the guy with the anchor looks and the anchor delivery - what's his deal?
His deal, writes Stephen Spruiell in the new issue of National Review, is that "in the 3 1/2 years since Olbermann took over as the host of 'Countdown,' he has fully abandoned his stated goal of anchoring a sober news broadcast and become instead a shameless presenter of opinion as fact."
You'd expect William F. Buckley's magazine to say something like that (indeed, Olbermann took the attack as a badge of honor and mentioned it on his show). But there is more than a little truth in that criticism.
With each special comment, each story that mocks the GOP, Olbermann edges ever closer to a form of journalism not seen since the early 20th century, when Democratic and Republican newspapers routinely sparred, their front pages filled with wildly differing accounts of a news event.
If Keith Olbermann's brand of journalism is what it will take to keep viewers younger than 60 informed, is it worth throwing neutrality overboard?
Bill v. Dave: Round 2
Early in his tenure as host of the CBS "Late Show," David Letterman invited radio host Rush Limbaugh on his program. That 1993 exchange grew testier as it went along and ended with Letterman asking Limbaugh, "Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and just think to yourself, 'I am just full of hot gas'?"
The crowd burst into cheers. Limbaugh looked like he wanted to flee the stage.
By contrast, when the No. 1 rated cable news anchor Bill O'Reilly appeared in 2005 on "Late Show," he got angry and sparred verbally with Letterman but didn't back down and later declared victory.
And as a sign that he meant it, O'Reilly showed up again Oct. 27 to do battle once more on the CBS late-night host's home turf. This time, though, the political mud wrestling seemed choreographed. The crowd hooted and hollered on cue. It felt like O'Reilly was channeling Harvey Pekar, the "American Splendor" comic writer who became a popular foil for Letterman on his old NBC show.
Letterman's lines sounded rehearsed: "I don't even know how to get to your show. I dial up Fox, and it's always 'The Simpsons.' You're putting words in my mouth, just like you put artificial facts in your head. A reasonable person can't believe what you're saying."
When allowed to interject, O'Reilly would say things like, "That's ridiculous! That's absurd!" But his anger never came close to the boiling point."We're really just friends," O'Reilly said to the camera at the end. "It's all an act."
That it is.
As I mentioned on tvbarn2, MSNBC is already quoting the "20th century" line in their brand new Countdown promos.
Posted by: Ed Dravecky III | November 08, 2006 at 03:42 AM