Rachel Maddow: Bill O'Reilly A "Race-Baiting Fuck." PLUS: Tweety got Phil Donahue fired.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/04/rachel-maddow-bill-oreill_n_748877.html

Rachel Maddow called Bill O'Reilly a "race-baiting f*ck," CNN tried to hire Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews wanted Phil Donahue out of MSNBC.

Those are but three of the juicy revelations in Gabriel Sherman's must-read New York magazine cover story this week about CNN and MSNBC, appropriately titled, "Chasing Fox."

The cable news business is notoriously competitive, as Sherman captures in his feud-heavy, 6,000-word-plus article. Below, just a sampling of some of the feuds unveiled in the piece -- read the full article at NYMag.com (http://nymag.com/news/media/68717/) for more.

After O'Reilly called Maddow an "NBC News loon," Maddow said she wanted to respond by wearing a loon suit. "Sorry, you really hurt my feelings," she said referencing O'Reilly. "I am a loon. I'm on the Canadian dollar bill. It's awful...but you, however, are also a race-baiting fuck."

Chris Matthews vs. Phil Donahue

In 2002, a gossip item ran saying that Matthews, who saw himself as MSNBC's biggest star, saw Donahue as a huge threat to the network. Donahue was gone soon thereafter, though Matthews told Sherman he had nothing to do with that decision.

[babylonsister]

1. I rec'd that article; behind the scenes at the networks. Good stuff! nt

[newspeak]

2. Tweety got Donahue fired?

I even wrote the network an irate letter for letting go of Donahue. He was one of the only ones who had guests who spoke out against invading Iraq. If Tweety influenced the firing, Tweety can go to Hades!!!!!

[Poll_Blind]

3. A voice like Phil Donahue's would have been so useful over the years. This news is...

...upsetting. I'm not a Matthews hater, per se, but I wouldn't put it past him.

PB

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. A Donahue show was the first time that I realized that the Russian

people weren't much different than we were and that they distrusted their leaders as much as we did. After that, the Cold War didn't make sense.

[newspeak]

5. I watched Donahue since the seventies

and I can say, that I was absolutely livid when they took Donahue off, especially since we had the likes of Billo. I'd take a million Donahues over the likes of beck, billo the clown, and limpballs.

[Qutzupalotl]

6. I'm not sure she has first-hand info on this

since she didn't join MSNBC until just a couple of years ago. I could be wrong about that, but that's my recollection. If that's the case, she might be getting her info through the grapevine, which if true is still upsetting. I liked Donahue, and the other poster's right: we sure needed his voice before the Iraq invasion!

[RZM]

8. Personally, I kind of doubt he had much influence in the decision

I remember when he made his anti-Donahue comments, but my guess is Donahue was booted over ratings -- from what I remember, he wasn't able to draw a whole lot of viewers so I'm guessing it was more of a bottom-line decision, though no doubt the ego-driven Matthews saw himself as a big reason for the firing. Had Olbermann not been able to establish himself and get decent numbers, I'm sure he would have been gone too. The 8 pm time slot is key in cable news, probably another reason why Campbell Brown is no longer on at that time over at CNN. More than anything else, I think it's a numbers game.

[Hannah Bell]

15. no, it was despite his good ratings; you misremember.

[RZM]

18. I consulted the wikipedia article

It's not really conclusive and could be interpreted in several ways. I just have a hard time believing that they would can somebody based solely on Tweety's ire. But hey, I'm not an executive there so what do I know :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donahue_%28MSNBC_program%29

[sabrina 1]

20. You're remembering incorrectly.

Donahue's Show was the highest rated show on MSNBC at the time, with nearly half a million viewers each night.

He was fired because MSNBC 'became part of the war effort'. Donahue was exposing the lies being told and he was getting standing ovations from his audience each time he brought on people who actually knew we were being lied to.

So MSNBC decided they could not have that going on 'in a time of war'. You know, the truth. They had their embedded reporters on the job, reporting how great America was and as Ashley Banfield said later, (which got her fired also) 'we were not allowed to truthfully cover the war, to show what happened after the bombs fell'.

In fact, Donahue's ratings were often higher than Tweety's at the time.



Americans need to rise up and do something about our 'news' media. The PTB get away with what they get away with only because the U.S. has no real news media. All of it is controlled by Corporations and the MIC.

Which is why I never bother with it except to see what they are pushing and then go find out the facts from some more credible sources.

[kenny blankenship]

7. Calling Bill O a "race baiting fuck" is an insult to coitus

and to all the orifices that make it possible.

[valerief]

11. Ha!!!!!

:spray:

[grasswire]

9. wait a dadgum minute

Olbermann was in deep negotiations with CNN about moving Countdown away from MSNBC?? And yet David Shuster was banned from the camera for considering the same move??

How about some consistency in policy, Phil Griffin!

"And so Klein set out to poach Olbermann. At the time, Olbermann had a window to negotiate in his MSNBC contract and Klein made a hard sell. He told Olbermann he could bring Countdown to CNN—the two even discussed which members of Olbermann’s staff would make the move with him. “Jon and I were in very deep discussions on a regular basis for me to go over there,” says Olbermann. “One of the premises was we would have put MSNBC out of business.”

Ted Turner’s vision of the primacy of the news remained something of a religion at CNN. But Klein was hired to take risks. A former executive vice-president at CBS News, Klein had a reputation as an expletive-spouting showman. He was based at CNN’s offices in the Time Warner Center, lunched frequently at Gabriel’s and Porter House New York, and enjoyed reading his quotes in the Times. When he took the job in 2004, he insisted CNN give him the title of president. It was a style that didn’t always sit well with Walton and senior executives in Atlanta, which had been the power center that imbued the network with a folksy, cautious sensibility. A CNN lifer who had joined the network as a 23-year-old video journalist, Walton cast himself as a protector of CNN tradition.

Walton pushed back on Klein’s plan to hire Olbermann. “I’m not gonna be the guy who’s gonna turn CNN into an opinion network,” he told executives in meetings. But in Klein’s view, CNN already was an opinion network. For an hour each night, Walton tolerated Lou Dobbs’s anti-immigration tirades. Klein pressed Walton to reconsider, but Walton held firm. “I bailed out when it became apparent that the people above were less than sanguine about this,” Olbermann tells me.

[GoCubsGo]

12. It was not "the same move"

Schuster filmed a pilot show for CNN while working for MSNBC. He did it without the knowledge of MSNBC. Keith did no such thing. If he had jumped networks, he would have gone in with an existing show. Apparently, MSNBC knew about KO's contacts with CNN, because they re-negotiated his contract, giving him more than double what he was making in the previous one. Schuster, on the other hand, did it all under their noses.

[rocktivity]

10. And now Keith has unseated Tweety as MSNBC's golden boy

AND he was able to use his influence to get Rachel Maddow in. Your chickens have come home to roost, Tweety--if you pardon the expression!

:rofl:
rocktivity

[RZM]

19. He's not happy about it either

I tried to find the clip of Tweety derisively laughing at Olbermann outside the 2008 Democratic convention but couldn't. But I think it's safe to say he's not taking it well.

[hootinholler]

13. kick 4 l8r n/t

[Scurrilous]

14. K & R

:thumbsup:

[benlurkin]

16. Donahue's show sucked

I was expecting Donahue's show to be as good as his previous show but he lost his touch and was an unbearable bore. He sucked.

[eridani]

21. It had one of the highest ratings on MSNBC n/t

[dmr]

22. He had his hands tied by the network. If I remember correctly he had to have

2 cons for each liberal. To 'balance' it out, ya know. :crazy:

He was pretty much set up to fail, but Americans were so hungry for the truth. Donahue's ratings were high despite the network's interferring.

MSNBC did Donahue dirty, and his viewers, too.

[Arkana]

17. Hey, Rachel's right again.

O'Reilly may not be the biggest asshole of the bunch now, but he's among them.