MB Civic

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100406D.shtml

If Olbermann gets canned he’ll be the second guy with the highest rated show on MSNBC to get fired .. the first being Phil Donahue

Canceling your top-rated show doesn’t happen often, but it happened to Donahue. Who knows what will happen to Olbermann?

…In the last months of Donahue, management gave us strict orders: if we booked a guest who was anti-war, we needed two who were pro-war. If we booked two guests on the left, we needed three on the right. When a producer proposed booking Michael Moore, she was told she’d need three right-wingers for ideological balance.

During the run-up to the Iraq war, NBC bosses were worried that Donahue was “a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.”

NBC’s solution then? Dump Phil, stifle dissent, brandish the flag.

NBC’s solution now? So far, Olbermann appears to be on more solid footing – mostly because the political zeitgeist is much changed from four years ago.

But MSNBC is still owned by GE’s conservative bosses, and managed by NBC’s ever-timid executives. Olbermann knows this reality as well as anyone; six months ago on C-SPAN, while expressing confidence that good ratings would keep them at bay, he remarked: “There are people I know in the hierarchy of NBC, the company, and GE, the company, who do not like to see the current presidential administration criticized at all.”

Olbermann’s show, Countdown, airs weeknights on MSNBC at 8 pm. Here are links to his website (click) and blog (click). Go watch and read!
-MAB