The Los Angeles Times made a rather humorous error in their TV listings and some, depending on what they personally think of MSNBC talking head Keith Olbermann, may not have noticed the difference. Their TV listings for Thursday listed Jackass in the time slot where Countdown with Keith Olbermann should have been. The paper issued a correction the following day, disappointing thousands of easily hammered frat boys (including me) who thought MTV's nightly cavalcade of nut shots and poo fights had returned to television on another network.
Olbermann was OK with the mistake until one of the paper's bloggers used it as a political parry against him and his network. That launched the MSNBC host into a personal tirade against the blogger and anything else that happened to saunter into the path of Olbermann's angry spittle cannon.
Andrew Malcolm, a writer for The Times' political blog Top of the Ticket, noted that without the correction "a few thousand people might have tuned into MSNBC, the Obama administration's favorite cable channel, expecting to see a Jackass show, and instead they'd have found Olbermann." I know I was disappointed. I thought I was finally going to get to watch Olbermann do a little blindfolded skateboarding or take a spin on the crapper sled.
Olbermann took to the airwaves and launched a rebuttal against Malcolm by lumping him and his struggling newspaper in his daily "Worst Person in the World" segment.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
I've noticed this trend developing on MSNBC and their arch-nemesis Fox News. It is slowly becoming my biggest pet peeve behind coffee houses that don't give out stirrers and force you to use your finger and pushy Jehovah's Witnesses who talk like they were trained by used car salesmen.
Whenever a network or newspaper calls out either MSNBC or Fox on something, their immediate rebuttal is to spout how much better they are doing in the ratings than them. Stop it already. That is not news. It is petty. It is self-serving. It is childish. It is, at its most mature, a company memo that they are sharing with their customers. So unless I'm allowed to attend the next MSNBC Christmas party, there is no reason to share it with the rest of us.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-25-2009 @ 3:23PM
JPN said...
Good thing no one looks at the TV listings in the paper anymore.
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8-25-2009 @ 3:56PM
lmike14 said...
Olberman has become a humorless twit!
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8-25-2009 @ 5:17PM
Gemma said...
Ha!-- I wanna see how you react, Mr, Gallagher, when someone in the LA Times alleges that only 2 people read your blog! It's been my experience that members of the peanut gallery who opine that public figure X should have "just let it go" and "turned the other cheek" are the first to become righteously indignant when it's the size of their own audience being questioned.
MSNBC has worked hard to earn every viewer they have and are entitled to take some pride in how far they've come in 5 years, considering the competition they were up against. Malcolm can keep his sneers to himself.
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8-25-2009 @ 5:41PM
thinktank said...
Gemma,
Check out this link:
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/ratings/the_scoreboard_monday_august_24_125243.asp
It says that yesterday Bill was 593 points ahead of Keith in the Nielson ratings. How can Bill "aledge" something when the facts point out the validity of his claim? He often posts the Nielson ratings on his show.
Facts don't lie and the Nielson ratings are in no way beholden to Fox or Bill. How you want to spin that fact is up to you I guess
8-25-2009 @ 5:06PM
LC said...
Somebody pushed Mr O's sensitive button.
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8-25-2009 @ 5:52PM
Jake said...
Gemma:
You and Keith Jackass -- excuse, Olbermann -- seem to suffer from the same reading comprehension problem.
Malcolm suggested that "a few thousand people" (one might call them idiots) MIGHT have ACCIDENTALLY tuned in to Countdown expecting to find Jackass. He then joked that perhaps some of them wouldn't have known the difference (because, you know, Olbermann is a jackass).
That in no way suggests or intimates that Countdown or MSNBC is watched by only "a few thousand people," or that the Countdown viewership might only have been those "few thousand people" absent the correction. It is not a commentary on rating or viewership at all, yet Olbermann oddly (and, as Danny points out, self-servingly) attacked it as such.
The point was that Olbermann is an ass. And, well, he kinda demonstrated here, no?
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8-26-2009 @ 3:40AM
Gemma said...
Jake, you haven't been following this ongoing debate between MSNBC and Fox for very long, have you? The issue of ratings is Fox's -- and the network's blogging supporters' -- relentless obsession, 24/7. It's Fox's answer to any comparisons of the two networks. Malcolm's quip referenced that ever-present subtext, regardless of literal parsing.
8-25-2009 @ 8:25PM
Obvious said...
"I've noticed this trend developing on MSNBC and their arch-nemesis Fox News....."
Did you notice this before or after Markos wrote about it in his latest book that was published...what...two years ago?
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8-25-2009 @ 10:04PM
Crybaby said...
WWWWAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! My ratings are so good... I am number 1 in the 9:15 to 9:23 time slot amongst 18-22 year old college students not yet in a drunken comatose state.
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8-25-2009 @ 11:29PM
Sam said...
On another topic Danny - coffee house stirrers? Really? You can't use the butt end of a plastic spoon? Come on now. ;-)
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8-26-2009 @ 8:16AM
Tennessee Budd said...
I've never seen Olbermoron, but I've heard of him, & it seems to me that "jackass" would be one of the kinder descriptions.
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8-26-2009 @ 5:37PM
CassavaLeaf.com said...
They still caught Jackass
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8-26-2009 @ 10:35PM
Brian Fowler said...
Olbermann is just another angry lib. That's why only his mother watches his show. Why are libs angry all the time? Is it because of "Global Warming"?
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8-26-2009 @ 11:30PM
ratming said...
If Malcolm's statement was so "outdated", why did Olbermann waste everyone's time by riffing on it?
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8-27-2009 @ 1:51PM
John Howell said...
I understand the people at "Jackass" are absolutely furious over this libelous mistake.
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9-03-2009 @ 1:36PM
Jeff said...
If anybody has the right picture of Olbermann, they can put his face on Knoxville's body as he sticks his arm up to his elbow into a cow's behind:
www.jackassworld.com/pages/big-stage
Olbermann would do it himself if he had a sense of humor. So would the tv blogger at the LA Times. But they don't.
By the way, you can also put YOURSELF into a jackass video at that address.
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9-03-2009 @ 1:38PM
Jeff said...
http://www.jackassworld.com/pages/big-stage
Sorry. That's why they say not to try these at home, unless you're supervised by professionals. Professionals would remember to put in the http.
9-09-2009 @ 1:06PM
texas dd said...
Just maybe jackass keith should listen to him boss Immelt and keep his mouth shut, we can dig up dirt on you too jackass keith O
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