Buh-bye, Keith

BTW, this is clearly discrimination.

Keith famously doesn't drive, and they tell him he has to move to BFE Connecticut, or Los Angeles? I see an ADA lawsuit.

 

Or maybe it's just a bullshit ploy by a corporation trying to cover its own ass?

 

Sad to hear. I've always liked Keith, even when I disagreed with him. His hour-long 11 p.m. show was must-see TV for me -- particularly the opening 7 minutes BECAUSE of his commentaries. In his own way, KO is his generation's Howard Cosell because of their unique perspectives and approaches. Regrettably, as with Cosell, his work might not be appreciated until years down the road. Godspeed his return to some other network's studio.

 

The way I interpreted it was that they wanted to save some money, not $40 million, by moving the show. He said no, so they save $40 million by cutting the show all together.

 

By the time Cosell went off the air, his appreciation was on the decline.

 

Writing a book that shits on everyone he worked with did him no favors.

 

No argument here. But remember, Cosell held concurrent titles as the best sportscaster and the worst sportscaster in at least one significant poll. I interpret that those results differentiated between what he did (best) and how he did it (worst). He was pretty much reviled in his final years but appreciation for his body of work has grown since he died. And I'm not suggesting that Keith's contributions to the artform are as profound as Howard's, just that appreciation for Olbermann's work may follow the same timeline trajectory.

 

Once KO's show was moved to afternoons (and not 10 CT/11 ET) and cut down to 30 minutes from 60 (not sure whether that was before or after the move to afternoon), the death rattle wasn't far off.

It is a different world for Olbermann's approach, compared with his 1995 heyday on ESPN. I loved the sports commentaries at the start, even if I disagreed with them. The "Keith Lights" were decent shtick but had the feel of Cheap Trick playing a county fair in northern Wisconsin. KO played so well off Dan Patrick and, in 2015, we've already seen the highlights of a particular game or team.

A worthy experiment as I DVR'd all of the first 3 months of his shows starting in August 2013. Except... I don't think I watched past the commentaries after the first two weeks and, by October, I didn't watch it at all.

 

So funny to be reading about Howard Cosell because I've become hooked on the horrible "Battle of the Network Stars" shows they're running on MOnday nights on ESPN Classic. I'm guessing it had to really burn Howard that he got assigned to such a trashy event.

 

Cosell was a massive celebrity sniffer (he sold himself as the host of ABCs original 'Saturday Night Live' variety show in 1974, which bombed) and I think he ate the "Supersrars" and "Battle of the Network Stars" idea up, in the beginning at least. Plus he loved the concept that anything aspiring to be a "major sporting event" needed his presence to legitimize it.

I think he probably cooled off on that idea after two or three of the BOTNS productions, as they started to draw lower and lower quality "stars."

 

Agree. In the 1970s, Cosell absolutely loved being at these trash-sports because it feeded his ego for airtime. He had the Bananas star turn and, after calling MNF or Ali-Frazier, nothing made him feel more wanted than interviewing Cathy Lee Crosby after the tug of war at the end.