I Wish Keith Had His Own News Team

[Syrinx]

I'm a huge fan of Keith and Countdown. But I suggest that we urge that NBC *really* support the show.

He should have at least three experienced hard-news producers, and a few exclusive reporters.

I love the show now, but it's mostly a repeat of the Nightly News, Williams thankfully replaced by Keith. I'd love some serious investigations. Of the government.

Just think what KO could do if he had the staff and budget! It could be an excellent 60 Minutes episode every night! When that meant something.

And we might rid our house of rats.

EDIT: I meant to say that David Shuster is good. He could be used better on Countdown than Hardball. Yes, I know that Shuster worked at Fox and CBN... he says both were/are shit.

And Monica Novotny could be good too. I wish Keith and his producers would use her talent more carefully.

EDIT AGAIN: I like Oddball, but in my "re-imagining" of Countdown there wouldn't be any overt Comedy, yet Keith's dry wit will envelope the product. ;)

ONE MORE EDIT: I'm seeing a "hugh" set with Keith in the middle and Monica and Craig Crawford on either side. Out of 46(?) minutes, Keith gets thirty, and the twins split the rest. Or something like that.

[SharonRB]

1. Sounds like a great idea.

I'd like to 86 Oddball and the entertainment stuff and let him concentrate on the real news and his hard hitting stuff -- election fraud, Plamegate, NSA wiretapping, and all the rest of the crap that's going on.

Welcome to the KOEB! :hi:

[Syrinx]

5. I agree with you entirely

And thanks for the welcome! I hope it's okay for me to visit the KOEB, given that I'm not really "attracted" to KO -- I'm a straight guy. ;) But I do think he's great at what he does, and I've followed him since his days at ESPN. I hear he used to be on CNN, but for some reason I can't recall that, and I've watched CNN since day one (though not as much lately).

[gkhouston]

11. come any time. We're about more than

:loveya: on KO. I'd love to see them drop Keeping Tabs, but wouldn't mind if they kept Oddball. I think short bits of lighter material interspersed throughout the show might help them keep a more general audience so hanging on to top 3 newsmakers, etc., would probably be a good idea, but having the number 1 and number 2 stories usually being completely news-free gets old after a while.

[Syrinx]

18. I'd love to see his sister

You know, Keithica. ;)

[gkhouston]

19. I have no idea what she does

but I assume she has a name and a life of her own, probably quite separate from his. I didn't exactly come out as a clone of my siblings...

[Syrinx]

22. I guess you didn't watch that night

Keith was doing some story about that racecar driver Danica Patrick. Keith is a past and present partner with Dan Patrick. And so Keith made a joke (or maybe related one from Dan Patrick) about some woman named "Keithica Olbermann." I wish I could remember more detail, but it was funny.

I don't even know if KO has a sister.

EDIT: I tracked down the reference. Actually it was Keith referring to this "report" by Fox Sports.

The Indy 500 has been roaring back into public awareness thanks, in large part, to the marketability of driver Danica Patrick. Patrick's career rise includes qualifying as the fourth woman to race in this event, despite the recent loss of pit boss Keithica Olbermann.

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:yz604juj8xwJ:msn.foxsports.com/other/story/3644194+%22keithica+olbermann%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

And from May 30, 2005, on Countdown:

OLBERMANN: Probably heard the name Danica Patrick over the weekend. She drove in the Indianapolis 500 yesterday. As a sports humor columnist at FOXSports.com noted, she accomplished this, quote, “despite the recent loss of pit boss Keithica Olbermann.”

Our fourth story on the COUNTDOWN, if you thought this was the breaking-down of one of the last gender barricades in sports, I hate to pull rank on you, but I was a sportscaster for 26 years, and women have been part of the Indy 500 since 1971. The first one to compete in the race, Janet Guthrie, did so in 1977.

As our correspondent Kevin Tibbles reports, what made Ms. Patrick so special was not that she was a woman racer, but rather she was a rookie racer who nearly won the darn thing, that, and the whole Dan Patrick, Danica Patrick business.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:sDbbhZx8RUAJ:thejuice.msnbc.com/id/8044968/+%22keithica+olbermann%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=3

[gkhouston]

23. someone said last year that he does have a younger sister

but I don't know anything about her. Somehow I doubt her name is Keithica. :rofl:

on edit: I don't remember who said this but it was right after someone publicly remarked on his suspenders and he started keeping his jacket buttoned (presumably to hide them). I think it was around tie-buying time last year...

[RevCheesehead]

2. Hi, Syrinx - welcome to the Clubhouse!

You've got some great ideas there. Plenty of good stuff. I don't mind "Oddball", provided it's short, and there's a point to it. Maybe it doesn't have to be done every night.

I wish they'd drop the entertainment stuff altogether. I hate it.

Worst Person in the World is getting tired. It, too, should only be done when there's reason to - perhaps 2 or 3 times a week.

I can't help but get the feeling that Keith really isn't that much in control of how his show is done. He may do the stories himself, but I think the choice of stories is still being handled by his producers. Frankly, I think he needs new producers.

I wish MSNBC would give Keith even HALF the chance they give Tweety. He gets first shot, apparently, at all the plum stories, interviewees, and is free to make the show whatever he wants it to be. Maybe Keith should be doing Hardball? At any rate, I'm sure he'd enjoy any kind of baseball. :)

[Berry Cool]

3. Hmmm.

Interesting ideas.

I have to say, though...the humor of the show is part of what makes it for me. I don't want to see it go all serious and hard-hitting most of the time. I like a mix of the serious and the absurd. I also don't want to see anything happen to the show that will lessen the amount of Keith in it.

I also doubt MSNBC is going to invest any more into letting Countdown do its own reporting than they already do. It's too cheap and easy to just squeeze extra mileage out of the stories on NBC News.

[Gogi]

4. I'm with you, Berry.

eom

[Syrinx]

7. I guess I like some of the silly stuff myself

Really, more than Oddball, it's the steep decline in the "seriousness" of the featured segments from 5 to 1. Usually the top story really is important; sometimes number 4 is too. But more often than not, it's right down into Dateline-style fluffies after that.

Still, it's my favorite news show on these days.

[Syrinx]

6. hey Rev!

I guess I'm okay with the brief tabloid segment, but I'd be grateful if they could go a week or so without a Michael Jackson story. ;)

I like the "Worst Person In The World," but sometimes Keith scrapes the bottom of the barrel there. It's always a joy when he picks O'Reilly for that. I'd be glad to pay $30 to see those guys go at it on pay-per-view.

I must admit I was a little shocked when the top story recently was about Oprah. Judging from that alone, I think you must be correct about KO's control over the show.

Thanks for being kind to the estrogen-challenged. :)

[RevCheesehead]

8. We looooove testosterone around here!

Drop in anytime - but especially when we blog the show. Although I'll miss the next 2 nights, I can pretty much guarantee that someone will buy ya a drink. :)

[Berry Cool]

9. I didn't have a problem with the top story being Oprah

when the story had to do with James Frey.

Because at heart, that whole story was about the difference between truth and fiction. And if we can't tell the difference between truth and fiction, or we tell ourselves it doesn't really matter, we will get ourselves into more wars like the current quagmire.

No WMD? So what? We THOUGHT there were WMD. Or SOMEONE did. That's all that matters, in the eyes of some. The WMD thing had enough "truthiness" to justify going to war and staying there. Even though it was not, in fact, true.

It's but a short step from believing some guy who claims he was in jail for months when he was only there a few hours, and that a girlfriend of his hanged herself when she really slashed her wrists, to believing in WMD that don't exist as a justification for going to war. After all, it SOUNDS as if it could be true, right? You can justify it the same way Oprah initially tried to defend Frey's book, can't you? "Hey, it resonates with people. Whether or not it is actually true doesn't really matter."

See, that's what it's all about. To me, anyway. It's not just about Oprah The Celebrity and The Little Author Who Lied. It's not just about a famous opinion leader trying to salvage her reputation when she realizes people won't buy what she's saying. It's about the very nature of the difference between fact and fiction, and whether or not it matters.

I think it does. And for that reason, I think it deserves to be a top story. And I would say that even if it had to do with Michael Jackson or Tom Cruise.

Sometimes you have to look beyond the "celebrity gloss" of a story to see what it is really about. Ninety percent of all stories involving celebs are just fluff--but in my opinion, this one was not.

[Syrinx]

10. cool

[RevCheesehead]

15. When I say celebrity, I mean Tom & Katie.

I mean Brad & Jennifer.
I mean Michael Jackson, attention whore and nutjob.
The purely entertainment, ratings-based shit that Keith hates, and always introduces with "another story my producers are making me do"...that's the stuff I'm talking about. It's bad enough that he has to cover that kind of shit - but when that shit makes it to the #1 story on Countdown, it cheapens the show.

In a way, I think the whole concept of Countdown is a wink and a nod. Everyone knows that the #5 story is really the #1 story. It's also why I hate to miss the beginning of the show - that's where all the good stuff is.

[Berry Cool]

16. Yah, but that's the whole thing. The #1 story is the least important one

and everyone knows it.

I think Keith does the best he can with the celebrity crap he gets pushed to cover. One of the things I love about him is that I can always count on him to snark on celebrities. I actually enjoy seeing him do that. Seeing him remind us of how unimportant they are in the scheme of things.

[gkhouston]

12. I'm not sure new producers would necessarily be better, and

could easily be worse. They seem to be mostly following the herd-sense of "what is news", but KO is asking the questions he wants to ask. It's not clear to me that he always gets the guests he'd like to be interviewing, but that issue may go far beyond who's producing the show (vis a vis the story about the V.P. noticing when KO had "liberal" interviewees on his shows two nights in a row :eyes:).

For the most part, it seems like KO selectively uses the standard footage to lay out the bones of the story, then goes to a brief interview to give you something you might not get on the vanilla network news broadcast and that seems to be working well, IMO.

[crispini]

13. Well, I myself am just here for the ties.

:evilgrin: Kidding, kidding. All very good ideas, and yes, I wish KO had a bit more leeway to do some OTHER stories that are a bit more off the "beaten" path. Although, really, my first item on the Countdown Makeover list would be to bring back the News Quiz! :7

[gkhouston]

14. I really do miss the news quiz

That's one bit of fluff that I'd love to see, partly because we get to see Monica. They really should use her more.

[Berry Cool]

17. Honestly, is there anyone who DOESN'T miss the News Quiz?

It puzzles me to death why they'd take the most popular part of the show and trash it. :shrug:

[gkhouston]

20. I think he just likes to change things up now and then. n/t

[Berry Cool]

21. Yeah, but why'd he have to change THAT?????

*sigh*...You don't get rid of something people like...

I don't know, maybe it was eating into his time a lot, but in that case, why not have him do it every other week and then Gidget every other week? They could take turns quizzing each other. It would still be loads of fun.

Not to mention, he could solicit guest "quizzees" from the audience at home. He wouldn't even have to bring them to the studio. Do a remote from their local NBC affliate, the way he does with a lot of his interviews. Quiz 'em long distance, see how many questions they can answer based on watching his show that week, give out a prize.

[gkhouston]

24. it's his show. I'm guessing he got tired of it.

Guest quizzes could be pretty perilous -- every bit as dangerous as doing a "man in the street" interview, IMO.

[Berry Cool]

25. But it would be so much fun.

Part of the interest in Countdown is that it's live TV and you never really know what will happen.