When Keith Olbermann left the job that made him famous enough to become a national sandwich spokesman, he did not do so, it is safe to say, clutching glowing letters of reference.
Olbermann’s departure this summer from ESPN and “SportsCenter,” the sports highlight show enlivened for half a decade by his canny writing and unflappable air presence, occurred amid public avowals of amicability but hints aplenty of backstage unpleasantness.
It was Olbermann who went on the nightly talk show hosted by another “SportsCenter” refugee, Comedy Central’s Craig Kilborn, and, in response to Kilborn’s challenge to name the most God-forsaken place on the East Coast, responded, “Bristol, Conn.”
Bristol, you can guess, is the headquarters of ESPN. There were other factors at work, but he was gone from the cable sports channel two months later after nearly six years there.
When Olbermann resurfaces tonight–as host of one of the most promising sounding news broadcasts in some years, “The Big Show” on MSNBC–viewers will see that while he may have fouled the nest, he hasn’t flown all that far from it.
Instead of one basic cable network, he’ll be working for another, albeit smaller, one, the NBC-Microsoft news channel that reaches some 38 million households.
He’ll still be doing an hour each night coming off the day’s events, though this time at 7 o’clock weeknights.
He’ll still be writing his own material, with an eye toward the comic and the caustic. And he’ll be working out of another place that, like Bristol, is not exactly Manhattan: Secaucus, N.J.
Even the title stems from, and seems designed to tweak, his “SportsCenter” experience. “The Big Show” was the anchors’ nickname for the broadcast, and one they would use often on air. It also became the name of the book Olbermann and longtime co-anchor Dan Patrick wrote about “SportsCenter.”
But the MSNBC version of “The Big Show” will be more of a talk show, about three-fourths interviews, compared to the archly narrated highlight compendium that is “SportsCenter.”
And–the biggest difference–its playing field is not just the games men and women play on fields, but the world itself. “The Big Show” is a news show, and Olbermann, a sports broadcaster since coming to television with then-fledgling CNN in 1981, does not see a problem in the switch. “Thirty five percent of the stuff that constituted `SportsCenter’ was serious news that happened to be about sports–athletes in trouble, sports stadia,” he said.
Still, “The Big Show” will be trying to do with news what “SportsCenter” did with sports: Remove the crust of automatic reverence, while still treating what is serious with the thoughtfulness it deserves.
Most important in Olbermann’s mind is that it will acknowledge that the human experience is not monochromatic. “My major complaint with television news, and with all the shows that have evolved from the basic news broadcast, is they all hit one note,” he said. “Life is not like that. You do not spend one day crying then one day laughing. We will try to hit every one of the notes every single day.”
Asked for a program they might compare it to, Olbermann and executive producer Phil Griffin bring up NBC efforts from decades ago. Olbermann mentions the short-lived NBC News “Overnight” show, hosted by Lloyd Dobyns and Linda Ellerbee because it had “news, humor, follow-up, context, the whole parade.”
“But they were more restrained than we will be,” promised Olbermann, 38.
Griffin vows that the show will remain topical, will not become “cutesy for Keith,” but it will feature two segments specifically tailored for him.
One, called “The Big Deal,” will offer Olbermann doing a kind of short essay on what he and the staff think is the most significant event of the day–as opposed to the biggest news.
The other will end the broadcast with a package of humorous stories called “The News WITHOUT Brian Williams,” a reference to the more traditional newscast that follows.
Olbermann acknowledges that his recent commercial work–as a pitchman for Boston Market in pointed ads that had him exhorting rail-thin supermodels to quit moaning and have a sandwich–does not jibe with his new role.
But he defends doing the ads as at least making a social point and as something that more and more broadcast journalists are doing.
“On the list of people who are going to hell for making commercials, I’ll be at the end of the line, and I might not go,” he said.
Describing “SportsCenter” as a threadbare operation where he had to fight management to get creative material on the air, Olbermann sounds thrilled to be working for an organization with the resources and confidence in him of NBC, where he will also contribute to the main network.
(ESPN management’s response Wednesday was to wish Olbermann “peace and happiness with all his future employers.”)
At MSNBC, Olbermann said, “I’ve got a staff of people who say, `You need more staplers? Is the light good enough? Would you like us to rebuild your office?’ “
If “The Big Show” is able to prove America has the same appetite for a smart take on the news that “SportsCenter” proved about sports, expect Keith Olbermann to be Secaucus’ stapler king.
