Olbermann in New York for the Republican convention, after he ran the desk in Denver during the Democratic convention. Some staff members said the tension led to the network’s decision to keep Mr. Matthews, had their own squabble after Mr. Olbermann and his co-anchor for convention coverage, Mr. Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams, the past and present anchors of “NBC Nightly News,” have told friends and colleagues that they are finding it tougher and tougher to defend the cable arm of the news division, even while they anchored daytime hours of convention coverage on MSNBC and contributed commentary each evening. “We were told, ‘No, it’s not Sarah Palin and you don’t know who it is.’ ” “The fact that it was reported in real time was very embarrassing,” said a senior MSNBC official. But McCain campaign officials warned the network off, with one official going so far as to say that all of the candidates on the short list were on their way - which MSNBC then reported. Palin’s plane was enroute to the announcement and she was likely the pick.
MSNBC had reported Friday morning that Ms. Tension between the network and the campaign hit an apex the day Mr. The McCain campaign has filed letters of complaint to the news division about its coverage and openly tied MSNBC to it. Olbermann abruptly took off his journalistic hat. On the final night of the Republican convention, after MSNBC televised the party’s video “tribute to the victims of 9/11,” including graphic footage of the World Trade Center attacks, Mr. Olbermann knew the difference between news and commentary.īut in the past two weeks, that line has been blurred. While some critics argued that the assignment was akin to having the Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly anchor on election night - something that has never happened - MSNBC insisted that Mr. Matthews, the host of “Hardball,” began co-anchoring primary night coverage, drawing an audience that enjoyed the pair’s “SportsCenter”-style show. “They have banked the entirety of the network on Keith Olbermann,” one employee said. As a result, his identity largely defines MSNBC. Olbermann raised his voice, his ratings rose as well, and he now reaches more than one million viewers a night, a higher television rating than any other show in the troubled 12-year history of the network. Olbermann in 2003 but it found its voice in his gnawing dissent regarding the Bush administration, often in the form of “special comment” segments.Īs Mr. His program “Countdown,” now a liberal institution, was created by Mr. Olbermann, a 49-year-old former sportscaster, has become the face of the more aggressive MSNBC, and the lightning rod for much of the criticism. (The New York Times and NBC News have a content-sharing arrangement exclusively for political coverage.) The employee, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity because the network does not permit its people to speak to the media without authorization. Fighting the ratings game, he added, “the bottom line is that we’re experiencing incredible success.” “In a rapidly changing media environment, this is the great philosophical debate,” Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, said in a telephone interview Saturday. The success of the Fox News Channel in the past decade along with the growth of political blogs have convinced many media companies that provocative commentary attracts viewers and lures Web browsers more than straight news delivered dispassionately. In prime time, the channel averaged 2.2 million viewers during the Democratic convention and 1.7 million viewers during the Republican convention. Although MSNBC nearly doubled its total audience compared with the 2004 conventions, its competitive position did not improve, as it remained in last place among the broadcast and cable news networks. Instead, the coverage frequently descended into on-air squabbles between the anchors, embarrassing some workers at NBC’s news division, and quite possibly alienating viewers. Executives at the channel’s parent company, NBC Universal, had high hopes for MSNBC’s coverage of the political conventions.
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