February 24, 2025 • 37 mins
SEASON 3 EPISODE 102: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN BULLETIN
A-Block (1:44) BULLETIN: Now FIVE different anchors of color have been dismissed, demoted, or had their shows cancelled in an MSNBC purge so brutal and racist that it makes you think the place is being run by Elon Musk.
The newest victims? Katie Phang, gone. Jonathan Capehart, loses his show. Ayman Mohyeldin, who was held up as the example of "we're not racist, we're giving him the show" when Mehdi Hasan was fired? HE'S lost the show. There wasn't even a non-anchor of color fired as cover (Katy Tur?)
If this sounds familiar it's the same playbook used at CNN three years ago. Destroy the product, drive away the audience, claim it's about business and not fascism. And it's something GE wanted to do with MSNBC in 2009 when our success was too much trouble for Chairman Jeff Immelt.
And where by the way are the protests from Maddow, Hayes, or O'Donnell?
(9:00) ON JOY REID'S FIRING: repeated from today's full episode of the podcast. Feel free to not listen again, it's half an hour. Yes, firing her is racist and maybe worse yes it is designed to keep out people who might think differently and it is designed to reward professional political salespeople like party chairmen and press secretaries. But most of all, since they also fired Alex Wagner, it means that four women of color have solo hosted prominent shows ON MSNBC and all four of them have now been fired.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This
is a Countdown Boulton podcast. I'm Keith Oldreman. The racist
purge has escalated at MSNBC. We told you this morning
about Joy Reid getting fired and no pretense being made
(00:28):
about why it was done, and Alex Wagner not going
to return to her own show, though supposedly staying on
as a correspondent. The number is now five. Katie Fang
is out. Her show has been canceled outright. Jonathan k
Part's show and Iman's show have also been canceled. They
may or may not stay on at the network. So
that is five Reid, Wagner, Iman, Katie Fang, and Jonathan
(00:51):
k Parts. What do they all have in common? This
on top of the previous firings of Meddi Hassan and
Tiffany Cross and others long before that. They did not
even attempt to cover this up with a fig leaf
by firing an unnecessary non person of color, somebody like
(01:12):
Stephanie Rule, who show is actually still on the air
at eleven o'clock, even though MSNBC would make more money
by simply replaying a Mattow rerun or a Hayes rerun
or an O'Donnell rerun, or a joy Read rerun. Well,
that's right, she's gone now, isn't she. After tonight, they
didn't even fire somebody as a fig leaf. That is
(01:33):
how truly naked. To continue the analogy, this racist purge is.
And there has not been a word from any of
the three main liberal anchors, my former guest hosts who
constitute the MSNBC primetime lineup. Because I'd like to think
they're thinking about it, I'm afraid I think they're thinking
(01:54):
about the money. There is a problem that happens to
someone who becomes a success suddenly and unexpectedly in their
life after failure. I've discussed it many times previously. You
suddenly wonder if it could all go away tomorrow, and
if you've had enough success and if you have had
enough money. Even if you have it doesn't register. But
(02:17):
back to the main point here, why on earth would
they do this? Why on earth would they do this
on the same day that NBC announces that less your
Holt is stepping down as the anchor of NBC Nightly News,
Although that had been rumored for a long time and
was apparently his choice, or at least partially his choice
to stay with the network and stick to dateline. The
(02:37):
nightly news format is dying finally, as we have seen
at CBS. That's perhaps separate of this, but to do
it all in a span of one day reeks of
we don't care if you think we are racist. And
the only people who would do something like that would
be people who were following the CNN game plan from
three years ago. The people who took over CNN, Warner Bros. Discovery,
(03:00):
led by David Zaslav and Chris Lick, who used to
be in the broadcasting business, decided rather openly to try
to make the thing right wing to please they're leading
new right wing investors. And if it didn't work, since
people simply stopped watching CNN, well so much the better.
You've neutralized CNN as a liberal outlet, or a partially
liberal outlet, or an occasionally liberal outlet, or even just
(03:22):
a neutral outlet, the way Twitter was neutralized by Elon Musk.
And now it comes to MSNBC. You don't go and
fire meadow. You can't. That would be the tent pole
collapsing and any value of the network completely vanishing. You
can't probably fire Hayes and O'Donnell, And what would the
difference be if you did but fire all the minorities
(03:44):
around the place, and you are signaling to the viewers
that you do not care about diversity of opinion in
a time in which the word diversity is suddenly like
the word communist was in the nineteen fifties. I've told
many times the story about what these networks really mean
to their corporate officers and owners. In two thousand and nine,
(04:04):
when Jeff Immelt, the chairman of GE, which I believe
was the sixth largest corporation in the world at that point,
was bothered by a reporter from Fox News who trailed
him and bothered him because I was critical of Fox
News and Bill O'Reilly on MSNBC. The reporter, by the way,
was named Jesse Waters. If that name rings a bell
(04:25):
when he was followed Immelt, that is, and he was
criticized on O'Reilly's show and accused of manufacturing parts GE
was manufacturing parts to make into IED's to kill Americans
in Iraq. When that happened, Jeff Immelt's mother, a Bill
O'Reilly fan, a Bill O'Reilly fan, called him up and
yelled at him, And after being harassed by Jesse Waters
(04:48):
and by his own mother, Jeff Immelt called Jeff Zooker,
the president of NBC, and said, take MSNBC off the air.
If I am bothered again by this, I am discontinuing
the network. Immediately, pay everybody off, and everybody is fired,
all at once. We were at that point perhaps profiting
two or three hundred million dollars a year, which seems
(05:09):
to you and me to be a lot of money.
But if yours is the fourth or fifth or sixth
largest corporation in the world, it's pocket change. You can
do without it. And even now, Comcast could spin off MSNBC,
which has been profitable through all of its travails the
last few years, and would be as profitable again as
it was during the first Trump administration with a little
(05:29):
care and feeding. They have spun it off with the
design to sell it and the other less than productive
cable networks to sell it, or as we are seeing here,
to kill it. But the doing of it this way
when you don't even as I said before, you don't
even offer the fig leaf of firing somebody who isn't
(05:51):
Mehdi Hassan or Katie Fang or Jonathan cape Hart or
Joy Reed or Alex Wagner or Eiman or any of them,
when you don't even bother to cover up what you
are doing. What you are doing is racism bluntly. If
I were Mado, if I were still working at MSNBC,
I would either go on the air and announce I
(06:13):
am leaving and will not return until these people are
restored or this is corrected in some other way, and
get up from the chair and let the network go
to blank, darkness or tone and bars. I would do that.
I almost did that on several occasions in two thousand
and eight, in two thousand and nine, but the crisis
(06:33):
was averted. I hope somewhere behind the scenes, Mattow is
doing something like that, or Hayes or O'Donnell or all
three of them. God knows. Matto and I put that
possibility to MSNBC and NBC executives several times in two
thousand and eight, nine and ten, and we prevailed. But
(06:55):
you have to go and do it. And if you
don't do it, Rachel, Lawrence, Chris, you are complicit in this.
And this is racism, and this is this is what
Joe Scarborough would do. I talked for half an hour
in today's episode of the podcast about the Joy Reid
firing and the Alex Wagner demotion or firing before we
(07:18):
knew about the rest of the purge on Monday afternoon.
I'd like to if you haven't heard that, play it
for you again. If you've heard it, feel free to
hit stop right now. This has been a countdown bulletin
podcast on the racist purge at MSNBC. I heard the
new Saturday Night Joy Reid out at MSNBC, and it turned
(07:41):
out to be much bigger than that. Joy Reid per
The New York Times to be replaced from her seven
PM show by moving a weekend show on MSNBC featuring
Michael Steele, who is a politician and brand salesman, although
he has not been active recently in the Republican Party,
He's a salesman. Simone Sanders a politician and brand saleswoman
(08:03):
from the Democratic Party. She's a saleswoman. Alicia Menendez, who
is the daughter of the senator from New Jersey. You
may have heard about him, who's a different kind of
salesman and she has largely been a party salesperson. Nothing
wrong with that show. It's been on for several years
on the weekends on MSNBC, and it's kind of interesting.
(08:27):
I suppose there's nothing wrong with it unless you want
insight or commentary or new people you have not heard
from before. It is textbook MSNBC. They lost the idea
I gave them and thought this is what it was,
salesmanship as opposed to commentary or insight. They're also offering
(08:50):
Alex Wagner in addition to Joy Read. Alex Wagner will
not return after what happens to Mattow happens at the
end of the one hundred days, they may replace her
with Jen Saki. And if anybody on television besides her
counterparts who are all on Fox, anybody is a salesperson
(09:11):
as opposed to an analyst or a commentator, it's Jensaki.
Jensaki who recently said that she was wondering if maybe
maybe she had oversold Merrick Garland and if perhaps she
regretted She was beginning to wonder if she regretted doing
such a good job convincing people Merrick Garland should be
(09:32):
the Attorney General of the United States and one wonders
if everything that we're going through now ends up in
the worst possible place, if as we all get marched
into the camps, Jensaki will be still wondering if she
made a mistake supporting Merrick Garland. These people are salespersons.
(09:53):
Salespersons doctrinaire, and often it's doctrinaire bullshit. If you have
been a salesperson, a press secretary for a politician these days,
you have sorry lied. Some people managed to swerve back
from this to become decent human beings, believe it or not.
(10:14):
One of Bush's secretaries, Scott McClellan, actually one day woke
up and said I'm better than this and wrote a
tell all book and promptly disappeared from politics. And I'm
sure he's had a happy life since. Because if you're
going to sell politics to people, if you're actually going
to sell things that you don't believe in, that you
(10:35):
haven't analyzed, that you can't find flaw in, that you
feel like you shouldn't mention the flaws in, you're irrelevant.
Michael Steele was the chairman of the Republican Party, and
as much as he's come to be an anti Trump
voice and a useful one. Every time I see him,
I think, what is this guy trying to sell me? Also,
(10:58):
that's a nighttime version three hosts of The Scarborough Show
in the morning. But I'm wandering off the main topics here.
I've had lots of problems with Alex Wagner. I've told
you the stories. I told you that she was not
when I tried to bring her in as the guest
host who would have succeeded Lawrence O'Donnell after Laurence o'donald
(11:19):
succeeded Rachel Mattow as the guest host on my show.
I told you that it was apparent from the beginning
she was not interested in doing the harder parts of
the job. Very smart, insightful, obviously very good on television,
but just not interested. I told the story about how
she did not want to learn how to use the
teleprompter and was confident she would pick it up. And
that's when we sort of bailed out on her, and
(11:40):
on her first show on MSNBC just twelve years later,
the prompter failed and she did not know what to
do and stood there for several moments waving at the
prompter as if she could get it to move by
waving at it and nobody would notice. So I have
lots of problems with her. But Alex Wagner was not
a salesperson for some politician or political point of view.
(12:02):
That political points of view you might have coincided with
her opinions. Yes, that was true of me too. I
was not a salesperson for the Democratic Party and all
things Democrat. And if you doubt that, ask Hillary Clinton
how she feels about me as a salesperson for all
things Democrat. But I am moving away from the main
topic here. Joy Reid was fired by MSNBC. There's lots
(12:27):
of other ways to phrase this, and I'm sure they
will dress this up to some degree, and I'm sure
she will get some money out of the deal. But
I don't think we are really understanding the impact this
is going to have on the MSNBC brand inside, the
new company that's running NBC or MSNBC and the ex
NBC cable networks inside that this is a big day
(12:50):
for them because they've just removed a pain in the ass,
just like when I agreed to leave after they breached
my contract, even though they had to give me roughly
twenty million dollars over the course of several years because
they've breached my contract. They were so happy that I went.
They are still happy, even though we spent the next
ten years dancing about possibly me coming back because things
(13:13):
were so bad over there. But where is the reaction here?
Where's the reaction from the MSNBC host who didn't get
fired in a Saturday night massacre? In all small letters,
the reaction from the MSNBC hosts is no surprise. It's
no surprise because there's been no reaction. Mattow, nothing, Al Sharpton.
(13:38):
Have we heard anything from Al Sharpton? Because there's something
about Joy read that I haven't gotten to yet. That's
kind of important here, in addition to the fact that,
just practically speaking, the conduit to bring people to MSNBC
and thus to what remains of mainstream television news. The
conduit the person who said, let's book this guest, and
let's bring in that guy, and let's bring in this woman,
(14:00):
and let's talk about this topic, which would have been
different than everything else on the air on MSNBC. That
was Joy Reid. And I had lots of problems with
lots of stuff she said, and I thought lots of
stuff she said was absolutely crazy, and so what going
back and looking at my shows from two thousand and seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,
I don't agree with everything I said then myself, let
(14:23):
alone what other people said. It's not supposed to be
like that. It's supposed to be inconsistent. It's supposed to
be poking different areas to see what holds up and
what doesn't. It's supposed to be saying, yeah, I like
this Occupy Wall Street thing. No, this is bullshit. It's
supposed to be like that. It's not supposed to be
here is today's show. We could record this and play
(14:45):
it back to you two years from now and you
wouldn't know the difference. That's not what it's supposed to be.
And unfortunately the entirety of the MSNBC lineup has become that,
except the Morning Show, which is of course MSNVS. Because
there's a problem here, larger problem, and nobody is going
(15:06):
to say this. Do you remember Melissa Harris Perry, she
used to be on My Show, later known as Melissa
Harris Lacewell. They gave her her own show in large
part because she did such a good job as an
analyst on Mine and a couple of other shows, and
she got her own show and they fired her. You
remember Tiffany Cross. Now, there was somebody who liked to
(15:30):
poke at things and see whether or not they were true.
And again, lots of things she said, I went holy
crap wrong. But so what you have to have room
for that, and what they're saying in MSNBC is we're
not going to have room for that anymore. She got fired.
So Melissa Harris Lacewell, Perry or Melissa Harris Perry Lacewell,
(15:51):
I'm sorry, Melissa. I could never keep it straight. She
got fired. Tiffany Cross got fired. Remember Tiffany Cross, among
the other things, Tucker Carlson attacked her. She was the
one who would go back and say, this was on
Fox the way I used to. Tucker Carlson claimed that
Tiffany Cross was inspiring genocide like Rwanda. Seriously, MSNBC's response,
(16:15):
rather than to come at Tucker Carlson with five million
metaphorical machine guns, was to fire Tiffany Cross. Because you
can have controversy as long as it's controversy trademark, and
you can sell it trademark, and you can put a
smile on its face trademark, and you can give it
a little silly grin or a kind of sad grin,
(16:35):
or a feel good grin, and then you can say,
now here's Laurence O'Donnell. They fired her, They fired Melissa
Harris Lacewell. Now they fired Joy Reid. Now they fired
Alex Wagner. Humm, Melissa Harris, Perry, Tiffany Cross, Joy Reid,
(16:57):
Alex Wagner. For women, what did they have in common? Well,
let's see, they all had their own shows solo hosts
on MSNBC, and they were all women of color, and
they've all been fired. I believe I'm not certain of this.
I didn't I spent enough time wondering about MSNBC firings.
(17:20):
I don't need to go through the list again. Forgive
me if I've gotten this wrong, but I do know
they're the last, four, if not the only four women
of color who have hosted shows on MSNBC. And they've
all been fired, and they've all been replaced by Well,
but you're what's Michael Steele was a man of color,
and Simon Sanders is a woman of color, and Alicia
Menendez is a woman of color. Yeah, they are official,
(17:44):
they are safe. They are not going to do crazy
things or bring on people you've never heard of before
who turn out to be better than the people you've
heard of. And they also may hire a professor from
Columbia's a woman of color, and they fired the only
remaining women of color who were solo anchoring political commentary
(18:06):
shows on prominent national television networks. Alex Wagner I think
probably is relieved by this. And it doesn't mean that
just because you're a woman of color or a person
of color, your show should be held to a lower
standard and you should get twenty five years to improve it. No,
at some point, guess what, I don't care who it is.
I don't care if it's Jesus Christ fresh off the cross,
(18:28):
a man of color that you would say, hey, you know, Jesus,
I'm sorry. It doesn't quite work. And the new woodworking
segments they weren't any good either. That's not the point.
The point is not you must protect all people of
color who get television shows, but if the show is
of value, and the ratings for Joy Reid's show went
(18:49):
up and down, just as MSNBC's overall ratings went and
is it possible that maybe she wasn't best for the
seven o'clock slot, Maybe maybe later in the evening, maybe
there might have been a greater audience, maybe at ten o'clock.
Now what they saw was people have been sharing clips
of the nightmare that is the Scott what's his name? Show?
(19:11):
Scott Jennings on CNN, which is nominally Abby Phillips show,
and poor Abby Phillips goes out there, Abby Phillip, excuse me,
Abby Phillip goes out there and gets tortured by this
racist Scott Jennings. It's his show, and it's a bunch
of people talking about how much of a racist he is.
And he leans back in the chair and rocks back
(19:32):
and forth and mugs to the camera and creates viral clips.
And somebody at MSNBC said, wouldn't we rather have that
than Joy Reid, who's now bald, appearing on television every
night at seven o'clock? Don't we want this? Won't this
make it easier to sell this company when we want to?
Won't it make it easier? The next time Trump threatens
NBC and MSNBC for us to say, but we fired
(19:53):
Joy Reid. More Practically, MSNBC's problems in terms of its
profitability and its ratings had nothing to do with Joy Reid.
As I said, her ratings went up and down exactly
as Chris Hayes's ratings went up and down, and Maddow's
ratings went up and down, and Maddow's replacements like Wagner,
(20:13):
their ratings went up and down. Lawrence O'Donnell went up
and down. A Weekends went up and down, including the
Simone Sanders, Michael Steele Alisha Menendez show ratings went up
and down, all in the same sign curves. The problem
at MSNBC is Joe Scarborough and until you fire Joe
Scarborough and get rid of msn V, she and what
that told people who watch that network, which I'm talking
(20:36):
about largely because A. I did invent it. B. It
is the only liberal network. It is the only thing
even close to being a liberal network. And the better
it is, the better it is for our society as
we attempt to keep democracy or some shred of democracy alive.
We need a strong, vibrant, loud, fearless MSNBC and not
(21:02):
the view forgive me at seven o'clock night. We need
people like Joy Reid. Even if you sit there and go,
I'm not watching that, it's important that she's there for
the people who want to identify with somebody who looks
like Joy Reid and say that woman is out here
trying to argue my point and is talking to me,
and is bringing people who look like me and look
(21:24):
like her onto television for the first time, and some
of them are going to become superstars. And if we
ever get out of this goddamned mess caused by lack
of courage, often on places like MSNBC, often in places
in the public discourse, we're ever going to get out
of this mess and restore this democracy, it's gonna be
because of people like Joyreaid. Even if you don't agree
(21:45):
with the goddamn word she said. No, keep Joe Scarborough
um now supporting Chump again. You've heard me talk about
Chump being Hitler all this time. I guess I was wrong.
Remember when I was trying to be his vice president.
Take somebody off his show to put him on in
(22:05):
primetime Michael Steele. Not take somebody off his show, Joe
Scarborough and put anything on, including bugs bunny cartoons, would
be a better political statement at seven o'clock in the
morning on MSNBC, and much more consistent and eloquent, and
bugs Bunny did not have a deviated septum either. One
(22:29):
last procedural thing about this about MSNBC and it is
I think of it the way I do ESPN, not
like an ex spouse, but really as and it's a
little pretentious, but as a child, as a child that
sometimes I have had good relationships with and sometimes I
(22:50):
have not. And to some degree it's the same thing
in limited doses with ESPN. I did not father ESPN.
It was well established before I got there. But there
are aspects to that relationship in which I go, oh, boy,
that's not going to work out for you later on.
Take it from an old man, and I feel that
way about MSNBC. And the other part about this is, okay,
(23:11):
you have turmoil now. At nine o'clock, Mattow retired. Mattow
went to once a week. They didn't know what to
do about Mattow. Mattow's going to be replaced four days
week by Alex Wagner. Oh no, that's not working. We're
going to bring Mattow back for five days week. She's
not going to do it long term. We'll bring Alex
Wagner back after this in April. Oh no, we're not
bringing her back. It's probably going to be Jensaki. You
(23:31):
know what. Jensaki is going to prove to not really
be a television person. There's going to be somebody else
needed at nine o'clock. Oh and what's now create chaos
at seven o'clock Because, honest to God, the first thing
I thought of when I was told on Saturday night
that they might get rid of joy Read, or that
it was done already, the first thing I thought of.
You now they're going to try to bring back Chris Matthews,
(23:51):
because they've tried to bring back Chris Matthews in the
Morning with Joe Scarborough. Because we need Chris Matthews right now,
because the shallow, random firings of the few electric in
his brain, something actually getting across those synapses knocking his
references to himself out of the way for a brief second.
(24:13):
That's exactly what MSNBC and the political dialogue needs right now,
Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews. When we go to the
camps and the doors open, the guys in the hats
with the keys will be Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews.
But back to the point about Joy Reid, and I
(24:34):
would love to see I would love to come to
you again on Thursday and say, you know what, I
apologize to this MSNBC anchor, and I apologize to Al Sharpton,
and I apologize to this group that I said they
were going to say nothing. And look at this. There's
a five thousand person encampment outside thirty Rock protesting Joy
Reid getting fired. I'd love to say that to you.
(24:55):
I do not expect to have to do it. I'm
not writing notes down for Thursday's show about the big
backlash within MSNBC about Joy Reid because Joy Reid threatens
all their money. Joy Reid says something controversial. Rachel Maddow
thinks I have twenty five million dollars coming to me.
I want my money. But the chaos is the real legend,
(25:21):
the real history of MSNBC. I don't know that I've
ever shared this with you. It took a friend of
mine named Rainy and I several days' worth of going
through old memos to compile this list. I've told you
many times that I worked and this is my story
about Joy Reid getting fired. It of course comes back
to me. I worked at MSNBC from its second year
(25:47):
nineteen ninety seven through the end of its third year
nineteen ninety eight. I did the eight o'clock show. It
is the first show anybody paid attention to on MSNBC,
and eventually I couldn't stand doing it anymore. It was
all about Bill Clinton, and I couldn't do it anymore,
and they sold me to Fox and I got out,
and then that didn't work and I went to see
it in for a while and they Connie Chung to
host their eight o'clock show instead of me, so that
didn't work out, and NBC was short an anchor at
(26:11):
MSNBC and invited me to come over for a couple
of days, and the next thing I knew, I signed
a contract to do the eight o'clock show again five
years later, and my friend Rany and I before it
was a parent that I was going to stay there
when it looked like I was just there for a
couple of days filling in because they were short of anchors.
We compiled this list of all the shows that had
been on after I left the network. On December fourth,
(26:33):
nineteen ninety eight. And this is my fear of what
is going to happen at MSNBC in the next couple
of years. The Revolving Door, the Game of Musical Chairs.
Just listen to this. So they had started the network
with a show called Internight, which had like sixteen different hosts.
They'd try to get somebody to sit down and do
an hour long interview, and they had everybody from Bob
(26:54):
Costas to Bill Moyers. They had sixteen different hosts and
it was filmed. It was on at eight o'clock at night,
and nobody watched it. So they needed a live television
news show before the Brian Williams newscast at nine o'clock.
And I was it October first, nineteen ninety seven to
December fourth, nineteen ninety eight, and then I escaped and
they replaced me with a guy who they thought was
(27:15):
exactly the same kind of show, John Hockenberry. John lasted
from December of ninety eight all the way through to
February of ninety nine, and then eventually they moved him
to the afternoon and when they fired him in August
of nineteen ninety nine, and his last show. He asked
rhetorically how much does cable suck? And the answer is
still being played out. John had all kinds of problems
(27:40):
dealing with women, as in he was a sexual harriser. Okay, anyway,
so he gets fired. The show that replaced me lasted
three months. Then they put on two half hour shows,
Equal Time with Oliver North premiering in February of nineteen
ninety nine and the McLaughlin Special Report John McLoughlin from
(28:01):
the McLoughlin Report, wrong that guy. They did two half
hours that lasted a month. They decided Oliver North needed
half an hour, but he needed a rotating set of
co hosts. Now, I want to clear this up. None
of the co hosts sat there and rotated. They had
different hosts. They were on a rotational basis. I think
in retrospect they regret this that it should have been
(28:23):
Oliver North with a co host who rotated. The co
hosts included Cynthia Axney, Peter Fenn and Keky Moore. I
can picture two of these three people. And at eight
thirty they replaced Special Report from McLaughlin that was canceled
and they brought in Time and Again, which was reruns
of old NBC news features in April of nineteen ninety nine,
(28:48):
so a month later it became a permanent hour long
show with Oliver North and Paul Begala as co hosts.
May thirtieth of nineteen ninety nine, so six weeks later
it became North and Begala shortened to half an hour,
and time and again came back. So it was time
and again, and it's time and again. Another month later,
in June nineteen ninety nine, they replaced the whole thing
(29:11):
Oliver North out special Edition with Ann Curry in filmed
recuts of Ann Curry pieces from Dateline and other shows. Now,
I love Ann Curry. I worked with her in Los Angeles.
A great person, a wonderful human being to my mind.
And again at eight thirty, time and again. Then they
expanded in about a month. In July of nineteen ninety nine,
(29:34):
the Special Edition with Ann Curry went to an hour.
Then Ann Curry left the program in May of two
thousand and they made it special Edition with Louri dou
Then in August, so now what three months later it
became MSNBC Investigates and the Joke, WASSC and NBC Investigates,
What happened to Lori dew On September twenty eighth, two thousand,
(29:56):
they made MSNBC Investigates a four day a week show,
so Monday through Thursday it was MSNBC Investigates again. This
is all the eight o'clock out after I left, We're
on Show twelve so far year two, Show twelve in
the eight o'clock slot MSNBC Investigates. But on Friday it
wasn't MSNBC Investigates. It was a weekly show called Missing
(30:18):
Persons with Diane Diamond. Soon it was Missing Missing Persons
with Diane Diamond. It was canceled after one month, so
they go back to an hour of MSNBC Investigates, a
pre tape show every night in October two thousand. Then
as the election approached, it became News Force with Forests Sawyer.
(30:41):
News Force. I don't want to know who thought Force
was a good name to put in a newscast. So
that evolved into Decision two thousand in December because there
was no decision in the election, and it became Decision
two thousand with Forest Sawyer. And when they finally to
MSNBC's great regret resolved the Gore Bush election. In January
(31:05):
two thousand and one, it became MSNBC Investigates again till July,
and in July two thousand and one they solved the
crisis of what to do at eight o'clock, only two
and a half years after I had left the news
with Brian Williams at eight o'clock for nearly fourteen months,
and then he said I don't want anything to do
(31:27):
with MSNBC ever again. In September two thousand and two,
at eight o'clock they premiered The Phil Donahue Show, which
lasted until February two thousand and three because the show
cost more money than they could possibly make in advertising,
and they replaced it with Countdown Iraq with Lester Holt
and segments with Pat Buchanan and Bill Press. In the
(31:51):
middle of a show Getting America Ready for War at
eight o'clock, MSNBC had Countdown Iraq with lester Holt and
Buchanan and Press, and then they had to move lester
Holt to the network and so Operation Iraqi Freedom with
Keith Olberman. Soon that was not enough. The news from
(32:16):
Iraq was no longer interesting, and we made it Countdown
with Keith Olberman March thirty first, two thousand and three.
So that was twenty shows me twenty new shows in
four years, and then me again because you can't have this.
And then after I left in twenty eleven, it was
(32:37):
the last word with Lawrence O'Donnell for a while, like
nine months. Then they put ed Schultz on instead. Then
they put in Chris Hayes in twenty thirteen. The idea
here is to return finally to the subject of Joyread.
(33:00):
You put people on TV who you, the executives can
control when the chips are down, when the company is
in trouble, when the boss goes to the anchor and says,
don't say this, they say, don't say what, and then
they don't say anything. When the company is in trouble,
(33:23):
when a dollar might not be earned, you won't hear
crap out of Maadow or O'Donnell or Hayes or Sanders
or Steel or Menendez or Jensaki. My version of this,
and it might have been stylistically philosophically it might have
been the only thing I shared with joy Read was
(33:45):
that when the chips were down in this circumstance and
a dollar was at risk, I felt it was my
job to say what they did not want me to say.
Not always, there are sometimes management is right. But if
they don't want you to touch a controversial topic, grab
it with both hands. That's your job. If not, if
(34:07):
you're not willing to do that, you can be replaced.
You can be replaced by missing persons with Diane Diamond.
Nothing against Diana used to work with her in radio
Lovely Woman. You could be replaced by news force. News force,
(34:28):
we break down your door and drag you away. It
is your job as a political commentator to get yourself
into trouble whenever possible, now, whenever necessary. I did that.
Joy Reid did that. I'm sure she looked at my
times in trouble and went, what are you doing that for?
(34:50):
And I know I've looked at her in some occasions
and gone, what are you doing that for? Doesn't matter.
The other thing you're supposed to do is you are
supposed to spend your political capital, your small p political capital,
your business capital inside your own operation, defending your colleagues,
or becoming a pain in the ass to management, develop
(35:11):
a reputation with management, to get people they didn't want
hired hired or to get people they didn't want on
the air on the air. Madam is a perfect example
of that. I'm not going to belabor that point, but
Joy Reid did that with a dozen people, and they
might as well have been all of them might as
well have been Huey Newton from the eyes of MSNBC
(35:33):
management from the day they put her on the air
on the weekends to the day they put her on
at eight o'clock with the current executives who just sold
the thing off so they could distance themselves from anything
good in television news. Again, I will be delighted to
(35:53):
come out here and apologize profusely and for an hour,
and this has been half an hour. Here, I will
profusely apologize to anybody at MSNBC who stands up in
defensive Joy Reid and says this stinks, this makes us white.
This is contributing to the entirety of the Trump racism
enveloping this country, and it is part of a stampede
(36:16):
to see which formerly liberal company can get to the
head of the racism line, the approved racism line, as
fast as possible. And Joy Read getting removed from the
primetime lineup of MSNBC is MSNBC's biggest contribution yet, although
Scarborough could top it at any moment, but honestly, what
(36:40):
do you expect to hear about Joy? Read from the
other people who count at MSNBC you want to hear
it again. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(37:01):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This
is a Countdown Boulton podcast. I'm Keith Oldreman. The racist
purge has escalated at MSNBC. We told you this morning
about Joy Reid getting fired and no pretense being made
(00:28):
about why it was done, and Alex Wagner not going
to return to her own show, though supposedly staying on
as a correspondent. The number is now five. Katie Fang
is out. Her show has been canceled outright. Jonathan k
Part's show and Iman's show have also been canceled. They
may or may not stay on at the network. So
that is five Reid, Wagner, Iman, Katie Fang, and Jonathan
(00:51):
k Parts. What do they all have in common? This
on top of the previous firings of Meddi Hassan and
Tiffany Cross and others long before that. They did not
even attempt to cover this up with a fig leaf
by firing an unnecessary non person of color, somebody like
(01:12):
Stephanie Rule, who show is actually still on the air
at eleven o'clock, even though MSNBC would make more money
by simply replaying a Mattow rerun or a Hayes rerun
or an O'Donnell rerun, or a joy Read rerun. Well,
that's right, she's gone now, isn't she. After tonight, they
didn't even fire somebody as a fig leaf. That is
(01:33):
how truly naked. To continue the analogy, this racist purge is.
And there has not been a word from any of
the three main liberal anchors, my former guest hosts who
constitute the MSNBC primetime lineup. Because I'd like to think
they're thinking about it, I'm afraid I think they're thinking
(01:54):
about the money. There is a problem that happens to
someone who becomes a success suddenly and unexpectedly in their
life after failure. I've discussed it many times previously. You
suddenly wonder if it could all go away tomorrow, and
if you've had enough success and if you have had
enough money. Even if you have it doesn't register. But
(02:17):
back to the main point here, why on earth would
they do this? Why on earth would they do this
on the same day that NBC announces that less your
Holt is stepping down as the anchor of NBC Nightly News,
Although that had been rumored for a long time and
was apparently his choice, or at least partially his choice
to stay with the network and stick to dateline. The
(02:37):
nightly news format is dying finally, as we have seen
at CBS. That's perhaps separate of this, but to do
it all in a span of one day reeks of
we don't care if you think we are racist. And
the only people who would do something like that would
be people who were following the CNN game plan from
three years ago. The people who took over CNN, Warner Bros. Discovery,
(03:00):
led by David Zaslav and Chris Lick, who used to
be in the broadcasting business, decided rather openly to try
to make the thing right wing to please they're leading
new right wing investors. And if it didn't work, since
people simply stopped watching CNN, well so much the better.
You've neutralized CNN as a liberal outlet, or a partially
liberal outlet, or an occasionally liberal outlet, or even just
(03:22):
a neutral outlet, the way Twitter was neutralized by Elon Musk.
And now it comes to MSNBC. You don't go and
fire meadow. You can't. That would be the tent pole
collapsing and any value of the network completely vanishing. You
can't probably fire Hayes and O'Donnell, And what would the
difference be if you did but fire all the minorities
(03:44):
around the place, and you are signaling to the viewers
that you do not care about diversity of opinion in
a time in which the word diversity is suddenly like
the word communist was in the nineteen fifties. I've told
many times the story about what these networks really mean
to their corporate officers and owners. In two thousand and nine,
(04:04):
when Jeff Immelt, the chairman of GE, which I believe
was the sixth largest corporation in the world at that point,
was bothered by a reporter from Fox News who trailed
him and bothered him because I was critical of Fox
News and Bill O'Reilly on MSNBC. The reporter, by the way,
was named Jesse Waters. If that name rings a bell
(04:25):
when he was followed Immelt, that is, and he was
criticized on O'Reilly's show and accused of manufacturing parts GE
was manufacturing parts to make into IED's to kill Americans
in Iraq. When that happened, Jeff Immelt's mother, a Bill
O'Reilly fan, a Bill O'Reilly fan, called him up and
yelled at him, And after being harassed by Jesse Waters
(04:48):
and by his own mother, Jeff Immelt called Jeff Zooker,
the president of NBC, and said, take MSNBC off the air.
If I am bothered again by this, I am discontinuing
the network. Immediately, pay everybody off, and everybody is fired,
all at once. We were at that point perhaps profiting
two or three hundred million dollars a year, which seems
(05:09):
to you and me to be a lot of money.
But if yours is the fourth or fifth or sixth
largest corporation in the world, it's pocket change. You can
do without it. And even now, Comcast could spin off MSNBC,
which has been profitable through all of its travails the
last few years, and would be as profitable again as
it was during the first Trump administration with a little
(05:29):
care and feeding. They have spun it off with the
design to sell it and the other less than productive
cable networks to sell it, or as we are seeing here,
to kill it. But the doing of it this way
when you don't even as I said before, you don't
even offer the fig leaf of firing somebody who isn't
(05:51):
Mehdi Hassan or Katie Fang or Jonathan cape Hart or
Joy Reed or Alex Wagner or Eiman or any of them,
when you don't even bother to cover up what you
are doing. What you are doing is racism bluntly. If
I were Mado, if I were still working at MSNBC,
I would either go on the air and announce I
(06:13):
am leaving and will not return until these people are
restored or this is corrected in some other way, and
get up from the chair and let the network go
to blank, darkness or tone and bars. I would do that.
I almost did that on several occasions in two thousand
and eight, in two thousand and nine, but the crisis
(06:33):
was averted. I hope somewhere behind the scenes, Mattow is
doing something like that, or Hayes or O'Donnell or all
three of them. God knows. Matto and I put that
possibility to MSNBC and NBC executives several times in two
thousand and eight, nine and ten, and we prevailed. But
(06:55):
you have to go and do it. And if you
don't do it, Rachel, Lawrence, Chris, you are complicit in this.
And this is racism, and this is this is what
Joe Scarborough would do. I talked for half an hour
in today's episode of the podcast about the Joy Reid
firing and the Alex Wagner demotion or firing before we
(07:18):
knew about the rest of the purge on Monday afternoon.
I'd like to if you haven't heard that, play it
for you again. If you've heard it, feel free to
hit stop right now. This has been a countdown bulletin
podcast on the racist purge at MSNBC. I heard the
new Saturday Night Joy Reid out at MSNBC, and it turned
(07:41):
out to be much bigger than that. Joy Reid per
The New York Times to be replaced from her seven
PM show by moving a weekend show on MSNBC featuring
Michael Steele, who is a politician and brand salesman, although
he has not been active recently in the Republican Party,
He's a salesman. Simone Sanders a politician and brand saleswoman
(08:03):
from the Democratic Party. She's a saleswoman. Alicia Menendez, who
is the daughter of the senator from New Jersey. You
may have heard about him, who's a different kind of
salesman and she has largely been a party salesperson. Nothing
wrong with that show. It's been on for several years
on the weekends on MSNBC, and it's kind of interesting.
(08:27):
I suppose there's nothing wrong with it unless you want
insight or commentary or new people you have not heard
from before. It is textbook MSNBC. They lost the idea
I gave them and thought this is what it was,
salesmanship as opposed to commentary or insight. They're also offering
(08:50):
Alex Wagner in addition to Joy Read. Alex Wagner will
not return after what happens to Mattow happens at the
end of the one hundred days, they may replace her
with Jen Saki. And if anybody on television besides her
counterparts who are all on Fox, anybody is a salesperson
(09:11):
as opposed to an analyst or a commentator, it's Jensaki.
Jensaki who recently said that she was wondering if maybe
maybe she had oversold Merrick Garland and if perhaps she
regretted She was beginning to wonder if she regretted doing
such a good job convincing people Merrick Garland should be
(09:32):
the Attorney General of the United States and one wonders
if everything that we're going through now ends up in
the worst possible place, if as we all get marched
into the camps, Jensaki will be still wondering if she
made a mistake supporting Merrick Garland. These people are salespersons.
(09:53):
Salespersons doctrinaire, and often it's doctrinaire bullshit. If you have
been a salesperson, a press secretary for a politician these days,
you have sorry lied. Some people managed to swerve back
from this to become decent human beings, believe it or not.
(10:14):
One of Bush's secretaries, Scott McClellan, actually one day woke
up and said I'm better than this and wrote a
tell all book and promptly disappeared from politics. And I'm
sure he's had a happy life since. Because if you're
going to sell politics to people, if you're actually going
to sell things that you don't believe in, that you
(10:35):
haven't analyzed, that you can't find flaw in, that you
feel like you shouldn't mention the flaws in, you're irrelevant.
Michael Steele was the chairman of the Republican Party, and
as much as he's come to be an anti Trump
voice and a useful one. Every time I see him,
I think, what is this guy trying to sell me? Also,
(10:58):
that's a nighttime version three hosts of The Scarborough Show
in the morning. But I'm wandering off the main topics here.
I've had lots of problems with Alex Wagner. I've told
you the stories. I told you that she was not
when I tried to bring her in as the guest
host who would have succeeded Lawrence O'Donnell after Laurence o'donald
(11:19):
succeeded Rachel Mattow as the guest host on my show.
I told you that it was apparent from the beginning
she was not interested in doing the harder parts of
the job. Very smart, insightful, obviously very good on television,
but just not interested. I told the story about how
she did not want to learn how to use the
teleprompter and was confident she would pick it up. And
that's when we sort of bailed out on her, and
(11:40):
on her first show on MSNBC just twelve years later,
the prompter failed and she did not know what to
do and stood there for several moments waving at the
prompter as if she could get it to move by
waving at it and nobody would notice. So I have
lots of problems with her. But Alex Wagner was not
a salesperson for some politician or political point of view.
(12:02):
That political points of view you might have coincided with
her opinions. Yes, that was true of me too. I
was not a salesperson for the Democratic Party and all
things Democrat. And if you doubt that, ask Hillary Clinton
how she feels about me as a salesperson for all
things Democrat. But I am moving away from the main
topic here. Joy Reid was fired by MSNBC. There's lots
(12:27):
of other ways to phrase this, and I'm sure they
will dress this up to some degree, and I'm sure
she will get some money out of the deal. But
I don't think we are really understanding the impact this
is going to have on the MSNBC brand inside, the
new company that's running NBC or MSNBC and the ex
NBC cable networks inside that this is a big day
(12:50):
for them because they've just removed a pain in the ass,
just like when I agreed to leave after they breached
my contract, even though they had to give me roughly
twenty million dollars over the course of several years because
they've breached my contract. They were so happy that I went.
They are still happy, even though we spent the next
ten years dancing about possibly me coming back because things
(13:13):
were so bad over there. But where is the reaction here?
Where's the reaction from the MSNBC host who didn't get
fired in a Saturday night massacre? In all small letters,
the reaction from the MSNBC hosts is no surprise. It's
no surprise because there's been no reaction. Mattow, nothing, Al Sharpton.
(13:38):
Have we heard anything from Al Sharpton? Because there's something
about Joy read that I haven't gotten to yet. That's
kind of important here, in addition to the fact that,
just practically speaking, the conduit to bring people to MSNBC
and thus to what remains of mainstream television news. The
conduit the person who said, let's book this guest, and
let's bring in that guy, and let's bring in this woman,
(14:00):
and let's talk about this topic, which would have been
different than everything else on the air on MSNBC. That
was Joy Reid. And I had lots of problems with
lots of stuff she said, and I thought lots of
stuff she said was absolutely crazy, and so what going
back and looking at my shows from two thousand and seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,
I don't agree with everything I said then myself, let
(14:23):
alone what other people said. It's not supposed to be
like that. It's supposed to be inconsistent. It's supposed to
be poking different areas to see what holds up and
what doesn't. It's supposed to be saying, yeah, I like
this Occupy Wall Street thing. No, this is bullshit. It's
supposed to be like that. It's not supposed to be
here is today's show. We could record this and play
(14:45):
it back to you two years from now and you
wouldn't know the difference. That's not what it's supposed to be.
And unfortunately the entirety of the MSNBC lineup has become that,
except the Morning Show, which is of course MSNVS. Because
there's a problem here, larger problem, and nobody is going
(15:06):
to say this. Do you remember Melissa Harris Perry, she
used to be on My Show, later known as Melissa
Harris Lacewell. They gave her her own show in large
part because she did such a good job as an
analyst on Mine and a couple of other shows, and
she got her own show and they fired her. You
remember Tiffany Cross. Now, there was somebody who liked to
(15:30):
poke at things and see whether or not they were true.
And again, lots of things she said, I went holy
crap wrong. But so what you have to have room
for that, and what they're saying in MSNBC is we're
not going to have room for that anymore. She got fired.
So Melissa Harris Lacewell, Perry or Melissa Harris Perry Lacewell,
(15:51):
I'm sorry, Melissa. I could never keep it straight. She
got fired. Tiffany Cross got fired. Remember Tiffany Cross, among
the other things, Tucker Carlson attacked her. She was the
one who would go back and say, this was on
Fox the way I used to. Tucker Carlson claimed that
Tiffany Cross was inspiring genocide like Rwanda. Seriously, MSNBC's response,
(16:15):
rather than to come at Tucker Carlson with five million
metaphorical machine guns, was to fire Tiffany Cross. Because you
can have controversy as long as it's controversy trademark, and
you can sell it trademark, and you can put a
smile on its face trademark, and you can give it
a little silly grin or a kind of sad grin,
(16:35):
or a feel good grin, and then you can say,
now here's Laurence O'Donnell. They fired her, They fired Melissa
Harris Lacewell. Now they fired Joy Reid. Now they fired
Alex Wagner. Humm, Melissa Harris, Perry, Tiffany Cross, Joy Reid,
(16:57):
Alex Wagner. For women, what did they have in common? Well,
let's see, they all had their own shows solo hosts
on MSNBC, and they were all women of color, and
they've all been fired. I believe I'm not certain of this.
I didn't I spent enough time wondering about MSNBC firings.
(17:20):
I don't need to go through the list again. Forgive
me if I've gotten this wrong, but I do know
they're the last, four, if not the only four women
of color who have hosted shows on MSNBC. And they've
all been fired, and they've all been replaced by Well,
but you're what's Michael Steele was a man of color,
and Simon Sanders is a woman of color, and Alicia
Menendez is a woman of color. Yeah, they are official,
(17:44):
they are safe. They are not going to do crazy
things or bring on people you've never heard of before
who turn out to be better than the people you've
heard of. And they also may hire a professor from
Columbia's a woman of color, and they fired the only
remaining women of color who were solo anchoring political commentary
(18:06):
shows on prominent national television networks. Alex Wagner I think
probably is relieved by this. And it doesn't mean that
just because you're a woman of color or a person
of color, your show should be held to a lower
standard and you should get twenty five years to improve it. No,
at some point, guess what, I don't care who it is.
I don't care if it's Jesus Christ fresh off the cross,
(18:28):
a man of color that you would say, hey, you know, Jesus,
I'm sorry. It doesn't quite work. And the new woodworking
segments they weren't any good either. That's not the point.
The point is not you must protect all people of
color who get television shows, but if the show is
of value, and the ratings for Joy Reid's show went
(18:49):
up and down, just as MSNBC's overall ratings went and
is it possible that maybe she wasn't best for the
seven o'clock slot, Maybe maybe later in the evening, maybe
there might have been a greater audience, maybe at ten o'clock.
Now what they saw was people have been sharing clips
of the nightmare that is the Scott what's his name? Show?
(19:11):
Scott Jennings on CNN, which is nominally Abby Phillips show,
and poor Abby Phillips goes out there, Abby Phillip, excuse me,
Abby Phillip goes out there and gets tortured by this
racist Scott Jennings. It's his show, and it's a bunch
of people talking about how much of a racist he is.
And he leans back in the chair and rocks back
(19:32):
and forth and mugs to the camera and creates viral clips.
And somebody at MSNBC said, wouldn't we rather have that
than Joy Reid, who's now bald, appearing on television every
night at seven o'clock? Don't we want this? Won't this
make it easier to sell this company when we want to?
Won't it make it easier? The next time Trump threatens
NBC and MSNBC for us to say, but we fired
(19:53):
Joy Reid. More Practically, MSNBC's problems in terms of its
profitability and its ratings had nothing to do with Joy Reid.
As I said, her ratings went up and down exactly
as Chris Hayes's ratings went up and down, and Maddow's
ratings went up and down, and Maddow's replacements like Wagner,
(20:13):
their ratings went up and down. Lawrence O'Donnell went up
and down. A Weekends went up and down, including the
Simone Sanders, Michael Steele Alisha Menendez show ratings went up
and down, all in the same sign curves. The problem
at MSNBC is Joe Scarborough and until you fire Joe
Scarborough and get rid of msn V, she and what
that told people who watch that network, which I'm talking
(20:36):
about largely because A. I did invent it. B. It
is the only liberal network. It is the only thing
even close to being a liberal network. And the better
it is, the better it is for our society as
we attempt to keep democracy or some shred of democracy alive.
We need a strong, vibrant, loud, fearless MSNBC and not
(21:02):
the view forgive me at seven o'clock night. We need
people like Joy Reid. Even if you sit there and go,
I'm not watching that, it's important that she's there for
the people who want to identify with somebody who looks
like Joy Reid and say that woman is out here
trying to argue my point and is talking to me,
and is bringing people who look like me and look
(21:24):
like her onto television for the first time, and some
of them are going to become superstars. And if we
ever get out of this goddamned mess caused by lack
of courage, often on places like MSNBC, often in places
in the public discourse, we're ever going to get out
of this mess and restore this democracy, it's gonna be
because of people like Joyreaid. Even if you don't agree
(21:45):
with the goddamn word she said. No, keep Joe Scarborough
um now supporting Chump again. You've heard me talk about
Chump being Hitler all this time. I guess I was wrong.
Remember when I was trying to be his vice president.
Take somebody off his show to put him on in
(22:05):
primetime Michael Steele. Not take somebody off his show, Joe
Scarborough and put anything on, including bugs bunny cartoons, would
be a better political statement at seven o'clock in the
morning on MSNBC, and much more consistent and eloquent, and
bugs Bunny did not have a deviated septum either. One
(22:29):
last procedural thing about this about MSNBC and it is
I think of it the way I do ESPN, not
like an ex spouse, but really as and it's a
little pretentious, but as a child, as a child that
sometimes I have had good relationships with and sometimes I
(22:50):
have not. And to some degree it's the same thing
in limited doses with ESPN. I did not father ESPN.
It was well established before I got there. But there
are aspects to that relationship in which I go, oh, boy,
that's not going to work out for you later on.
Take it from an old man, and I feel that
way about MSNBC. And the other part about this is, okay,
(23:11):
you have turmoil now. At nine o'clock, Mattow retired. Mattow
went to once a week. They didn't know what to
do about Mattow. Mattow's going to be replaced four days
week by Alex Wagner. Oh no, that's not working. We're
going to bring Mattow back for five days week. She's
not going to do it long term. We'll bring Alex
Wagner back after this in April. Oh no, we're not
bringing her back. It's probably going to be Jensaki. You
(23:31):
know what. Jensaki is going to prove to not really
be a television person. There's going to be somebody else
needed at nine o'clock. Oh and what's now create chaos
at seven o'clock Because, honest to God, the first thing
I thought of when I was told on Saturday night
that they might get rid of joy Read, or that
it was done already, the first thing I thought of.
You now they're going to try to bring back Chris Matthews,
(23:51):
because they've tried to bring back Chris Matthews in the
Morning with Joe Scarborough. Because we need Chris Matthews right now,
because the shallow, random firings of the few electric in
his brain, something actually getting across those synapses knocking his
references to himself out of the way for a brief second.
(24:13):
That's exactly what MSNBC and the political dialogue needs right now,
Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews. When we go to the
camps and the doors open, the guys in the hats
with the keys will be Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews.
But back to the point about Joy Reid, and I
(24:34):
would love to see I would love to come to
you again on Thursday and say, you know what, I
apologize to this MSNBC anchor, and I apologize to Al Sharpton,
and I apologize to this group that I said they
were going to say nothing. And look at this. There's
a five thousand person encampment outside thirty Rock protesting Joy
Reid getting fired. I'd love to say that to you.
(24:55):
I do not expect to have to do it. I'm
not writing notes down for Thursday's show about the big
backlash within MSNBC about Joy Reid because Joy Reid threatens
all their money. Joy Reid says something controversial. Rachel Maddow
thinks I have twenty five million dollars coming to me.
I want my money. But the chaos is the real legend,
(25:21):
the real history of MSNBC. I don't know that I've
ever shared this with you. It took a friend of
mine named Rainy and I several days' worth of going
through old memos to compile this list. I've told you
many times that I worked and this is my story
about Joy Reid getting fired. It of course comes back
to me. I worked at MSNBC from its second year
(25:47):
nineteen ninety seven through the end of its third year
nineteen ninety eight. I did the eight o'clock show. It
is the first show anybody paid attention to on MSNBC,
and eventually I couldn't stand doing it anymore. It was
all about Bill Clinton, and I couldn't do it anymore,
and they sold me to Fox and I got out,
and then that didn't work and I went to see
it in for a while and they Connie Chung to
host their eight o'clock show instead of me, so that
didn't work out, and NBC was short an anchor at
(26:11):
MSNBC and invited me to come over for a couple
of days, and the next thing I knew, I signed
a contract to do the eight o'clock show again five
years later, and my friend Rany and I before it
was a parent that I was going to stay there
when it looked like I was just there for a
couple of days filling in because they were short of anchors.
We compiled this list of all the shows that had
been on after I left the network. On December fourth,
(26:33):
nineteen ninety eight. And this is my fear of what
is going to happen at MSNBC in the next couple
of years. The Revolving Door, the Game of Musical Chairs.
Just listen to this. So they had started the network
with a show called Internight, which had like sixteen different hosts.
They'd try to get somebody to sit down and do
an hour long interview, and they had everybody from Bob
(26:54):
Costas to Bill Moyers. They had sixteen different hosts and
it was filmed. It was on at eight o'clock at night,
and nobody watched it. So they needed a live television
news show before the Brian Williams newscast at nine o'clock.
And I was it October first, nineteen ninety seven to
December fourth, nineteen ninety eight, and then I escaped and
they replaced me with a guy who they thought was
(27:15):
exactly the same kind of show, John Hockenberry. John lasted
from December of ninety eight all the way through to
February of ninety nine, and then eventually they moved him
to the afternoon and when they fired him in August
of nineteen ninety nine, and his last show. He asked
rhetorically how much does cable suck? And the answer is
still being played out. John had all kinds of problems
(27:40):
dealing with women, as in he was a sexual harriser. Okay, anyway,
so he gets fired. The show that replaced me lasted
three months. Then they put on two half hour shows,
Equal Time with Oliver North premiering in February of nineteen
ninety nine and the McLaughlin Special Report John McLoughlin from
(28:01):
the McLoughlin Report, wrong that guy. They did two half
hours that lasted a month. They decided Oliver North needed
half an hour, but he needed a rotating set of
co hosts. Now, I want to clear this up. None
of the co hosts sat there and rotated. They had
different hosts. They were on a rotational basis. I think
in retrospect they regret this that it should have been
(28:23):
Oliver North with a co host who rotated. The co
hosts included Cynthia Axney, Peter Fenn and Keky Moore. I
can picture two of these three people. And at eight
thirty they replaced Special Report from McLaughlin that was canceled
and they brought in Time and Again, which was reruns
of old NBC news features in April of nineteen ninety nine,
(28:48):
so a month later it became a permanent hour long
show with Oliver North and Paul Begala as co hosts.
May thirtieth of nineteen ninety nine, so six weeks later
it became North and Begala shortened to half an hour,
and time and again came back. So it was time
and again, and it's time and again. Another month later,
in June nineteen ninety nine, they replaced the whole thing
(29:11):
Oliver North out special Edition with Ann Curry in filmed
recuts of Ann Curry pieces from Dateline and other shows. Now,
I love Ann Curry. I worked with her in Los Angeles.
A great person, a wonderful human being to my mind.
And again at eight thirty, time and again. Then they
expanded in about a month. In July of nineteen ninety nine,
(29:34):
the Special Edition with Ann Curry went to an hour.
Then Ann Curry left the program in May of two
thousand and they made it special Edition with Louri dou
Then in August, so now what three months later it
became MSNBC Investigates and the Joke, WASSC and NBC Investigates,
What happened to Lori dew On September twenty eighth, two thousand,
(29:56):
they made MSNBC Investigates a four day a week show,
so Monday through Thursday it was MSNBC Investigates again. This
is all the eight o'clock out after I left, We're
on Show twelve so far year two, Show twelve in
the eight o'clock slot MSNBC Investigates. But on Friday it
wasn't MSNBC Investigates. It was a weekly show called Missing
(30:18):
Persons with Diane Diamond. Soon it was Missing Missing Persons
with Diane Diamond. It was canceled after one month, so
they go back to an hour of MSNBC Investigates, a
pre tape show every night in October two thousand. Then
as the election approached, it became News Force with Forests Sawyer.
(30:41):
News Force. I don't want to know who thought Force
was a good name to put in a newscast. So
that evolved into Decision two thousand in December because there
was no decision in the election, and it became Decision
two thousand with Forest Sawyer. And when they finally to
MSNBC's great regret resolved the Gore Bush election. In January
(31:05):
two thousand and one, it became MSNBC Investigates again till July,
and in July two thousand and one they solved the
crisis of what to do at eight o'clock, only two
and a half years after I had left the news
with Brian Williams at eight o'clock for nearly fourteen months,
and then he said I don't want anything to do
(31:27):
with MSNBC ever again. In September two thousand and two,
at eight o'clock they premiered The Phil Donahue Show, which
lasted until February two thousand and three because the show
cost more money than they could possibly make in advertising,
and they replaced it with Countdown Iraq with Lester Holt
and segments with Pat Buchanan and Bill Press. In the
(31:51):
middle of a show Getting America Ready for War at
eight o'clock, MSNBC had Countdown Iraq with lester Holt and
Buchanan and Press, and then they had to move lester
Holt to the network and so Operation Iraqi Freedom with
Keith Olberman. Soon that was not enough. The news from
(32:16):
Iraq was no longer interesting, and we made it Countdown
with Keith Olberman March thirty first, two thousand and three.
So that was twenty shows me twenty new shows in
four years, and then me again because you can't have this.
And then after I left in twenty eleven, it was
(32:37):
the last word with Lawrence O'Donnell for a while, like
nine months. Then they put ed Schultz on instead. Then
they put in Chris Hayes in twenty thirteen. The idea
here is to return finally to the subject of Joyread.
(33:00):
You put people on TV who you, the executives can
control when the chips are down, when the company is
in trouble, when the boss goes to the anchor and says,
don't say this, they say, don't say what, and then
they don't say anything. When the company is in trouble,
(33:23):
when a dollar might not be earned, you won't hear
crap out of Maadow or O'Donnell or Hayes or Sanders
or Steel or Menendez or Jensaki. My version of this,
and it might have been stylistically philosophically it might have
been the only thing I shared with joy Read was
(33:45):
that when the chips were down in this circumstance and
a dollar was at risk, I felt it was my
job to say what they did not want me to say.
Not always, there are sometimes management is right. But if
they don't want you to touch a controversial topic, grab
it with both hands. That's your job. If not, if
(34:07):
you're not willing to do that, you can be replaced.
You can be replaced by missing persons with Diane Diamond.
Nothing against Diana used to work with her in radio
Lovely Woman. You could be replaced by news force. News force,
(34:28):
we break down your door and drag you away. It
is your job as a political commentator to get yourself
into trouble whenever possible, now, whenever necessary. I did that.
Joy Reid did that. I'm sure she looked at my
times in trouble and went, what are you doing that for?
(34:50):
And I know I've looked at her in some occasions
and gone, what are you doing that for? Doesn't matter.
The other thing you're supposed to do is you are
supposed to spend your political capital, your small p political capital,
your business capital inside your own operation, defending your colleagues,
or becoming a pain in the ass to management, develop
(35:11):
a reputation with management, to get people they didn't want
hired hired or to get people they didn't want on
the air on the air. Madam is a perfect example
of that. I'm not going to belabor that point, but
Joy Reid did that with a dozen people, and they
might as well have been all of them might as
well have been Huey Newton from the eyes of MSNBC
(35:33):
management from the day they put her on the air
on the weekends to the day they put her on
at eight o'clock with the current executives who just sold
the thing off so they could distance themselves from anything
good in television news. Again, I will be delighted to
(35:53):
come out here and apologize profusely and for an hour,
and this has been half an hour. Here, I will
profusely apologize to anybody at MSNBC who stands up in
defensive Joy Reid and says this stinks, this makes us white.
This is contributing to the entirety of the Trump racism
enveloping this country, and it is part of a stampede
(36:16):
to see which formerly liberal company can get to the
head of the racism line, the approved racism line, as
fast as possible. And Joy Read getting removed from the
primetime lineup of MSNBC is MSNBC's biggest contribution yet, although
Scarborough could top it at any moment, but honestly, what
(36:40):
do you expect to hear about Joy? Read from the
other people who count at MSNBC you want to hear
it again. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(37:01):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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