Elliot Spitzer and Keith Olbermann
talk about the debt ceiling debacle
in a web-only Countdown segment
TPM:
Less than two months after Keith Olbermann made his debut on Current TV, the progressive television network has made another high-profile hire.
David Bohrman, formerly CNN's vice president of programming and Washington bureau chief, has been tapped as president of Current TV. And he'll have his work cut out for him. The network is planning to build its programming around Olbermann's "Countdown" -- currently its flagship program.
After securing "Countdown" in the lineup, Current co-founder and CEO Joel Hyatt told TPM "we realized what we needed, at the senior level of leadership at the company ... someone with the expertise in TV news programming and production. We set out to find the very best person, and all roads led to David Bohrman."
According to Bohrman, Current won't aim to compete with CNN, Fox, or MSNBC as a breaking news operation; rather it will focus, like Olbermann, on the bigger picture.
"We're not going to build a mega news gathering machine," Bohrman said. "What we're going to do is be aware of what's happening in the world, talk about it, analyze it and let people decide what they think." [...] "It's like the first inning in the game," Bohrman said. "Countdown" is the first flag that we've planted in a direction. "You'll see this thing unfold and develop."
As you probably already know, Markos is a regular contributor on the new Countdown. You can find the local broadcast channel here.