NBC, Comcast, and Olbermann

So Keith Olberman's been fired from MSNBC. In case you're wondering whether he was fired due to poor ratings:

FOXNEWS O'REILLY 2,918,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 2,079,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 1,940,000
FOXNEWS SHEP 1,786,000
FOXNEWS BECK 1,780,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 1,460,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 1,106,000
CNN PIERS 1,025,000
MSNBC MADDOW 976,000
MSNBC O'DONNELL 855,000
MSNBC SCHULTZ 760,000
CNN COOPER 740,000
MSNBC HARDBALL 700,000

In short, while MSNBC is a poor also-ran to Fox News, Olbermann's show had more viewers than any other show on CNN or MSNBC. So it's not ratings that led to Olbermann being fired. If it were ratings, administration hand job boy Tweety Mathews at Hardball would be looking for a new job, not Olbermann.

Some liberal bloggers are speculating that Comcast is behind Olbermann leaving. The question is... why? Comcast is a for-profit corporation. They're not Rupert Murdoch's not-for-profit right-wing propaganda network, all they care about is money. Olbermann was pulling in ratings. That's money. It just does not make sense. Neither does the notion that Olbermann left because he didn't want to work for Comcast -- he'd actually tweeted that the Comcast merger would be *good* for MSNBC, because MSNBC would be back on basic cable again and Fox News pushed to "Premium" status (MSNBC was pushed to "Premium" back in 1997 because for-profit GE charged more for MSNBC than Rupert Murdoch's News Corp charged for Fox News, which Rupert designed as a propaganda organ rather than as a for-profit venture).

My best guess: The folks at MSNBC who are going to get cleaned out by Comcast, especially Phil Griffin, decided to sharpen their knives and take out Olbermann, who they detest, before they themselves end up on the street. That's the only thing that makes the least bit of sense. In that case, we might see Olbermann back on MSNBC again at some point in the future... it just depends on how fast Comcast moves to clean house.

Not that I'll watch Olbermann of course. Frankly, I found him to be too strident for my taste. Rachel Maddow in my opinion does a better job of eviscerating right-wing nutjobs, she does it with a smile by maneuvering them to impale themselves on their own knives. Still, there were a lot of people watching him, and wherever he ends up, that will likely still be true, because in these times an honest voice is just damned hard to find...

-- Badtux the News Penguin