Well sports fans, that big bounce in ratings that Keith Olbermann received as a result of his vitriol-filled rant about President Bush on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is now officially over. It appears that those who tuned in last Tuesday and Wednesday to see what all the fuss was about – including those that were lobbied by liberal bloggers to do so – learned what many with a better-than-room-temperature intelligence quotient already knew.
In fact, the gap between Olbermann’s paltry ratings and what Paula Zahn and Nancy Grace are getting in the same time slot has widened. According to TVNewser: a week after Olbermann surged ahead of both Zahn and Grace with 695,000 viewers, his popularity plummeted to only 444,000 viewers, well below Zahn’s 783,000, and Grace’s 770,000.
And, for those KO fans that claimed victory because of the big jump in what was referred to as “The Money Group” – folks between the ages of 25 and 54 – the numbers there are just as bad. On Tuesday, September 12, KO beat Zahn and Grace in this demographic, garnering 245,000 such money viewers. Yet, a week later, he’s again trailing the pack with a laughable 187,000, practically half what Grace got. I guess these viewers were just as unimpressed with what they saw as other demographic groups.
In the end, a caustic monologue followed by tremendous media attention has left Olby right back where he started – at the bottom of the heap.
Sorry, Keith.