Is Olbermann ready for network news? w/ poll
Thu Nov 10, 2005 at 06:46:59 AM PDT
Les Moonves, CEO of CBS, has been thinking about revamping the CBS news since the deconstruction of Dan Rather. While CBS dukes it out with ABC for #1 in primetime each week, CBS's network news ratings are consistantly last.
Moonves doesn't like 3rd place and has toyed with several different options from a multi-anchor broadcast to a bubble headed bleached blonde who comes on at five, tells you of a plane crash with a gleam in her eye. In January Moonves said:
"Those days are over when you have that guy sitting behind the desk who everyone believes to the `nth' degree," Moonves told reporters. "It's sort of an antiquated way of news telling and maybe there's a new way of doing it."
In October,
Mr. Moonves brought Sean McManus (President of CBS Sports) over, to head up CBS News. What news does McManus like to watch
according to Steven Battaglio of TVGuide?
TVGuide.com: What are your own news-viewing habits?
McManus: Since I had my first discussion with [CBS chairman] Leslie Moonves a month ago, I watch all three of the evening newscasts very carefully every night.... But I will almost always watch parts of Keith Olbermann's show, Countdown. I love Hardball with Chris Matthews. I watch Hannity & Colmes because of the diversity of political opinion expressed there. I will see who Larry King has on. I will always check what Greta Van Susteren has on, and if it's a story on Natalee Holloway, I immediately turn it off. I used to love Capital Report. I really enjoy watching news and the different ways they cover news events -- just as I try to watch everything that ABC Sports, NBC Sports and Fox Sports does. I'm going to watch a lot of our competition and try to learn from them.
Is the
head of CBS Sports, now head of CBS news, going to have a former sportscaster, Keith Olbermann, head up the nightly news for CBS? Tim Goodman of the San Fransico Chronicle thinks Olbermann is the
'Countdown' to big change in network news. Excerpts from his Countdown article include:
And so it is that the future of broadcast network news has been hiding out, as it were, for two and half years on -- of all places -- cable.
If you want to know what the face of the future looks like -- at least the successful version, not some warmed over Bob Schieffer action or a trio of Triple A prospects on "Nightline," then
look no further than this man: Keith Olbermann.
Yes, that Keith Olbermann. The same man who, along with partner Dan Patrick, set a standard for anchoring a sports show on ESPN that has never -- try as ESPN does in ever-more transparently hokey ways -- been equaled. The same guy who worked for NBC and CNN and then, in various capacities, MSNBC, furiously trying in each place to unleash his personality and allow it to be accepted and appreciated.
~snip
Part Jon Stewart (the funny), Dennis Miller (the erudite and biting sub-references), H.L. Mencken (the skewering of power and stupidity in equal doses) as well as crusading journalist, Olbermann is clearly the future.
Not of cable, of course. Of broadcast network news. His show is what a modern newscast will look like to the masses. They just don't know it yet. And maybe networks won't realize this in time to adequately use him.
~snip
Oh, and by the way, Olbermann has been doing that on "Countdown" for two and a half years. Nobody knows how to make a tonal shift quite like Olbermann. One moment he's dissecting the Scooter Libby leak story with multiple sources and the next he's playing "Oddball," a quick departure from the serious to the silly. He's updating the Iraq situation or dissecting some unflattering poll numbers on President Bush, then naming that night's "Worst Person in the World" or peeking into the "Countdown" hall of fame for examples of what rapper Chuck D once called "the dumbassification of America."
Is network news ready for Olbermann? Is this a good thing for network news?
Hat tip to TVNewser. If you aren't reading TVNewser once a day, you should be.
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