As reported by the Associated Press, along with a contract extension for “Countdown” through 2011, “Olbermann will also contribute occasional essays to ‘NBC Nightly News’ and there will be two prime-time ‘Countdown’ specials a year on NBC, a division of NBC Universal, said NBC News President Steve Capus.”
Hmmm. So, rather than add another conservative contributor to a staff heavily laden with liberals, NBC News has decided to give more airplay to one of the most partisan and vitriolic personalities on television today.
Of course, this shouldn’t surprise readers given the sentiments expressed by Capus in this article: “Bill O’Reilly’s criticism of NBC News as a liberal-leaning network is ‘really kind of sad and pathetic,’ the network’s news president said.”
This appears to be heating up the television news war even further: “David Tabacoff, executive producer of Fox News’ ‘The O’Reilly Factor,’ said Thursday in a statement, ‘It’s nice to see that Jeff Zucker let Steve off his leash for a few minutes, but what is it about being exposed as a liberal news organization that he finds sad and pathetic?’”
Actually, David, with this announcement of a greater involvement in NBC News by Olbermann, it seems quite clear that Capus is reveling in his news organization being exposed as liberal.
Regardless, as MSNBC is losing the cable news war to all of its competitors, including CNN Headline News, one has to wonder why NBC News is at all interested in moving personalities from a losing division to a winning one. That’s kind of like moving a pitcher from your losing AAA team onto your first-place team in the Majors.
Not exactly smart management theory, wouldn't you agree?
