WTF!!! Olbermann back to ESPN!!!

[POJO_Risin]

Where the fuck have I been not to have heard this shit!!!

But Olbermann is back...teamed up with his old compadre Dan Patrick at ESPN...

okay...okay...okay...it's only part time...er...

1 hour a week...and on his radio show...but damn if that won't be a great fucking hour...

Olbermann's MSNBC show "Countdown," which is a great show by the way...will continue...

Olbermann says a lot of interesting things here...the best?

"I just had a lot of vacation time..."...lmfao...

yeah...8 years worth...hard to believe it's been that long...

[POJO_Risin]

I'm really surprised by this...during ESPN's 25 year anniversary week...Olbermann refused to come back and anchor a night...when nearly every other luminary did...

Here's the USA Today article...

Despite scorched bridges, Olbermann rejoins ESPN
By Michael Hiestand, USA TODAY
Pigs have flown: Keith Olbermann is once again going to cash ESPN paychecks.
ESPN will announce today that Olbermann, a SportsCenter anchor before leaving in 1997, will have an hour-long weekly show on ESPN Radio that will air Friday afternoons and begin this August.

Olbermann's exit from ESPN, where Olbermann was known for catchphrases such as "premature jocularity," wasn't amicable. He then moved to MSNBC to work on a news show that often focused on Monica Lewinsky.

The job, as Olbermann noted in a 1998 commencement address at his alma mater Cornell, wasn't fulfilling: It gave him "dry heaves," and it would "make me ashamed, make me depressed, make me cry."

Olbermann returned to working in sports television by moving to Fox.

After leaving Fox in May 2001, he suggested he'd like to work for ESPN Radio. He said, "For 20 years, a month hasn't gone by when I didn't think I'd get out of this TV nonsense and go back to the relative sanity of radio."

In response to that, ESPN's Mike Soltys was unequivocal: "He didn't burn bridges here. He napalmed them."

Soltys said Monday that Olbermann has expressed interest in recent years in working again, on TV or radio, for ESPN.

And Soltys now suggests he doesn't see Olbermann's return as anything bordering on the apocalyptic.

Said Soltys: "Now, I love the smell of napalm on Friday afternoons."

Olbermann, who is back at MSNBC and anchors its primetime news show Countdown With Keith Olbermann, won't be returning to ESPN's Bristol, Conn., headquarters.

The ESPN radio show, the name of which wasn't released Monday, will originate from ESPN Radio 1050 AM in New York City. It will be made available to more than 300 U.S. radio stations that carry ESPN programming.

Olbermann was unavailable for comment Monday.

[POJO_Risin]

Here's part of Olbermann's blog a couple of day's ago...

I never left ESPN, I just had a lot of vacation time! (Keith Olbermann)


SECAUCUS - So maybe you heard. I’m going back to ESPN.

Not full-time, mind you. Countdown will continue. But after eight years of what some might call estrangement (and others might call thermonuclear conflict), I will be joining my old SportsCenter tag-team partner Dan Patrick one hour a week on his ESPN Radio Show.

See? You can rebuild burned bridges. Or, in my case, a burned river.

Let me make it clear (as I wrote nearly three years ago in my old Salon column ) that I assume full responsibility for the unpleasantness. In retrospect, I was entitled to my opinions about the place, but I’m not exactly sure where I got the impression that every one of them needed to be expressed publicly. This time, I’m following a new policy: I’m going to always remember to let ESPN run ESPN.

A lot of folks who read or hear of this will focus on the interregnum (which, showing again that time and fate are ironic masters, became public exactly eight years ago this Thursday), and I not only understand that, but I’m willing to address it as needs be. But I’m focused on the sheer unadulterated joy of getting the privilege of working with my old buddy Dan on a regular basis.

Even throughout the Cold War, my friendship with Dan endured. I was, if I remember correctly, his first guest on his first show, and have made frequent appearances since. Fortunately, my boobiness in the interim never broke that connection.

Dan used to say, not always with a smile, that he spent more time with me than his wife. This was a poor choice on his part, but I, for one, appreciated the company. We know each other since the days when he succeeded me as CNN’s sports correspondent in New York in 1984, and just the other day I came across an old tape from my subsequent job in television in Boston. I interviewed Dan as part of a “media piece” on the ’84 NBA finals, and it probably marks the first time we actually were on the air together. The very brief transcript is as follows:

Keith: What’s your name?

Dan: Dan Patrick.

Keith: And who do you work for?

Dan: Cable News Network.

Keith: What’s that?

Dan: (Giggles, then stares daggers at me)

We were dark-haired, beaming youths at the time. Now we’re grizzled gray-haired veterans. Well, I’m gray-haired.

We’ve been running this shtick pretty much non-stop for 21 years. We made it into a kind of leitmotif on SportsCenter from 1992 through 1997. The basic premise - apparently a frequent one in the annals of on-air teams from newscasters to chainsaw-jugglers - was that while doing what appeared to the audience to be our full-time jobs, we were actually both out there to see if we could make the other one crack-up on the air. We have even done this before on ESPN Radio, in the dawn of its history in ’92 and ’93.

Don’t get me wrong. I love doing Countdown and the world of news is my primary focus. But Dan and I had so much fun, and worked well enough as a team, that when he was once called home for a family emergency, I wrote his scripts in his style. We even made this into a book, and, for the life of us, eight years after that, I can’t really remember what I wrote in my voice, what he wrote in my voice, what he wrote in is voice, and what I wrote in his voice. So, given a chance to work with him again, I jumped at it.

One other note on this news while I have you. It will be written in many quarters that I left ESPN in ’97 after the network suspended me for a week for doing a television interview promoting that book, without telling them first. Nope. That happened all right, but, if anything, the suspension had actually made the chances I might stay even greater than they had been. Simply put: I left because I wanted to live in New York and work just once a week for an hour with Dan, and that didn’t fit the company’s personnel policy. We actually parted so harmoniously that about three months later, the Executive Vice President at the time said that if it were contractually possible for me to do so, he’d be happy to have me contribute occasional stuff to ESPN Classic. The parting was amicable - it was later that I started to screw it up.

Anyway, all’s well that ends well. I get to live in New York and go on the air with Dan for an hour a week, and I’d have to say the eight-year wait was worth it. Every Friday starting in a few weeks, we’ll again be trying to make each other chortle, guffaw, or possibly spit something onto the microphone. You’ll have to listen closely for the sound of that, but rest assured we’ll be trying to accomplish it.

Now all I have to do is get back up to speed on sports. Which league was it that didn’t play this past winter?

E-mail: KOlbermann@msnbc.com

[Va Beach VH Fan]

I pretty much saw this coming, and eventually I think it'll lead to him coming back to ESPN full-time...

His MSNBC show, while I enjoy watching it, does terribly in the ratings, matched up against O'Reilly on FOXNEWS....

I think ESPN needs to do more of this, get more of the oldtimers back in there.... I just don't get the same vibe from a lot of these newbies...

Get Charley Steiner back in there, I thought he was really good.... That bit where he couldn't stop laughing with Jose Canseco's bit was hilarious...

And have you noticed that they've pretty much excommunicated Gary Miller, since he pissed out of the window of a Cleveland Flats nightclub ?? The only thing he does now is a crowd reporter at baseball games.

I mean come on, we've all pissed out of a window, haven't we ???

[POJO_Risin]

I have...;)

[academic punk]

Among my faves out there.

Good to have him and his laconic wit back.

[POJO_Risin]

Do you think his ratings will be high with Patrick?

Great show...

do bad Patrick and Olberman can't do a PTI type show...

[Matt White]

"SportsCenter from 1992 through 1997"

The gratest Program in the HISTORY of Television.

They need to get the Olbermann/Dan Patrick team back on TV!!!

DAMN! I hope this happens in a big way.

[POJO_Risin]

MSNBC would have to fire him...and even though he's miles behind O'Reilly...it's not like anyone's going to do BETTER than he is...

I just don't see it happening...at least soon...if that...

when that radio program takes off...you'll see them get a show of their own...

[academic punk]

Originally posted by POJO_Risin
Do you think his ratings will be high with Patrick?

Great show...

too bad Patrick and Olberman can't do a PTI type show...

I second Matt White's response. I think the ratings will be there, and, provided Olberman has the interest and time, it'll be no time before it's back on TV

[Va Beach VH Fan]

I'm not sure they'll match them up again together...

It seems they're propping up Mike Greenberg, who I think is very good as well....

[POJO_Risin]

Read Olbermann's blog...he said THEY ARE DOING THE SHOW TOGETHER...lmfao...

[rustoffa]

Olbermann and Kilborne...dream team.

I can't remember who Kilborne was paired with.

[POJO_Risin]

Wasn't Kilborne with BOOYAH?...

before Booyah took over for Kenny Mayne with Patrick?

after Olberman...

lmfao...sounds like Genesis...

[rustoffa]

I think it was BOOYAH. Cool as the other side of the pillow...yep. Goddamn, no wonder Kilborne got the fuck outta there. What's up with that dude's eye?

[POJO_Risin]

Booyah?...I can't stand him to even look at him...lmfao...no idea what's up with the fucker's eye...

[Va Beach VH Fan]

He was hit with a football at a Jets practice....

Almost lost it, matter of fact....

[rustoffa]

Pennington or Vinnie?

[Va Beach VH Fan]

It was from a jugs machine, if you can believe that !!

[POJO_Risin]

A JUGS Machine...

that's a great name...lmfao...

[Va Beach VH Fan]

I think that's what they still call them....