Keith Olbermann and MSNBC abruptly parted ways on Friday night, as the network announced it had agreed to end his contract and the last installment of his show would air that evening.
Olbermann made his debut on “Countdown” in 2003 and quickly became the face of MSNBC’s more liberal tilt in its evening hours. Along with fellow host Rachel Maddow, he helped catapult MSNBC ahead of Time Warner’s CNN in the size of its primetime audience.
Olbermann averaged 1 million viewers in 2010 in the 8 p.m. hour, according to MSNBC, a distant second to Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, but nearly double what CNN averaged against him in the hour.
WSJ, MSNBC, Olbermann Call It Quits, Cancel Show, Jan. 22, 2011
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Note: It’s a heavy round up to get Olberman’s audience to 1 million … typically, it ran around 750,000. O’Reilly is usually pegged at 2.5 to 3.0 million. CNN at about 500,000 to 750,000.
Most interesting: About 300 million folks don’t watch any of them in prime time … and, I think WWE beats them all when RAW and Smackdown are on.
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Source: Drudge Reports
The Homa Files 