Richard Deitsch’s weekly Monday sports media column at Sports Illustrated is usually filled with useful bits of information, a few exclusive details, and sometimes a very interesting interview with an industry newsmaker. This week’s interview with ESPN’s Keith Olbermann (it’s still weird typing that) is particularly captivating given the host’s return to the airwaves of the self-proclaimed worldwide leader.
In the SI interview, Olbermann opens up about his second run with ESPN, his constant battling with Twitter trolls (which he calls his “batting practice”), his call for Roger Goodell to be canned, and just how hell froze over to pave the icy road back to Bristol.
While it’s been common perception that Olbermann’s return to ESPN2 at 11 PM ET last year was done to counteract the launch of Fox Sports 1 and its flagship program Fox Sports Live, the host admits publicly that it indeed was the case. Olbermann was launched in part to take the shine off of Fox Sports Live’s debut. In fact, along with the mending of Olbermann’s relationship with ESPN, KO labels it as the second goal of his program’s existence.
So what are you most satisfied with — and what can still improve?
[ESPN president] John Skipper, [ESPN programming head] Norby Williamson and I had 2 ½ goals going in. The first one was: Let’s re-establish the relationship because I think they were just as unhappy as I was with the fact that every time somebody brought my name up in connection with ESPN, it had all the baggage of the past. We both wanted it to have a different ending and I think that has been true for a long time. Then there was the strategic usefulness relative to Fox Sports. In case there was anything actually happening there, the goal was to make sure it didn’t. My task, my assignment, was to basically smother them before they hatch. Destroy the eggs!
Have you destroyed the Fox Sports 1 eggs?
I take no credit for it because my experience with them [Fox Sports] having done the same thing at the other end of it, being with Fox Sports Net in 1999 and 2000 and 2001, suggests to me that anything they have achieved is entirely their own doing. But there was a certain quality of strategy for ESPN, as in: “let’s make this move now.” And it got as much attention as their launch did. The third goal that I referred to as our 2 ½ goals, that third one was do a good show. Once the Sports Emmy nomination [for Outstanding Daily Studio Show] came through [this year], I think that question was answered. We did all the things we set out to do with surprising quickness. I thought the whole getting back together thing would take a little more time than it did.
With his job seemingly done at 11 PM ET to take some of the steam out of the launch of Fox Sports Live, Olbermann was moved to 5 PM ET on ESPN2 this fall.
Mission accomplished? Perhaps so. Fox Sports Live is still struggling to gain traction on a nightly basis while Olbermann’s typically feisty commentaries have received more attention in the past few months than FSL has seen in a year’s time.
The result of the move is forming the first half of what is quickly becoming one of the best hours on sports television with Bob Ley and Outside the Lines following his eponymous program. It’s a largely beneficial switch for Olby because his schedule is now much more consistent versus the preemptions, timeshifts, and channel changes that plagued his first year in late night. Credit to Olbermann for fighting through those scheduling issues and keeping his head down. Past incarnations of KO may not have done the same.
This can’t be overstated – Olbermann’s success and harmony in his return home to ESPN is one of the most surprising stories to develop in the last decade of sports media. If someone would have predicted five or ten years ago that Keith Olbermann would return to ESPN in 2014 with his own show, and the two sides would be getting along famously, you might as well have predicted a Jacksonville Jaguars Super Bowl dynasty. The past year has taken the prodigal son motif to a new level.
There’s still many pages left to be written in Olbermann’s second ESPN tenure, and who knows how it ends. But the fact that it has gone so swimmingly up to this point, and the network succeeded in combating the flagship show of a potential competitor, is a remarkable turn of events.
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