The Kansas City Star’s Aaron Barnhart pans Keith Olbermann’s performance on Countdown last night…
In a phoner with reporters last week, Keith Olbermann promised that his special network version of “Countdown,” which aired last night, would not be any different that any “Countdown” he does for MSNBC. But that wasn’t true. My guess is that someone at NBC convinced Olbermann that for his first appearance as a newsman on the network it would be a good idea to take his hard-edged, hard-headed approach to “Countdown” and, well, soften it up a bit.
KO is a smart guy, but that was not a smart move.
I understand that audiences might be unfamiliar with Olbermann’s program, and could find the full-spectrum, serious-to-silly coverage that is “Countdown’s” specialty a tad disconcerting. But I felt it was unwise and, ultimately, condescending to bring on both Mo Rocca and the guy who hosts “The Soup” for separate segments. This on a night when KO was already altering his program to include a cold open (explaining to network viewers expecting to see Chris Hansen shaking down Internet sex fiends what they were about to see instead) and a football segment at the end, leading into NBC’s “Football Night in America,” on which Olbermann now also toils.
