Keith Olbermann Trims Show by Three Minutes to Appease Fans (and Rachel Maddow)

"Rachel, I won't step on your toes anymore." "Good,
and I won't call you a dick anymore." Image from HuffPo

When Current TV brought back Countdown with Keith Olbermann, the show turned out to be 63 minutes long. Olbermann tweeted that the "supersized" Countdown would be permanent. But it only lasted a few days. When a show runs over by a minute, two minutes or more, it is usually done to lead into another show, to prevent channel flipping. Current doesn't have any other shows that they are promoting. So the only thing the three minutes was accomplishing was to make people miss the first three minutes of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, or to irritate anybody trying to record the show on their DVR. So, rather than being a nifty three minutes of extra content, it was instead seen as a dick move.

Pressure from fans, and likely also not wanting to be seen as a dick, seem to have caused Olbermann to change his mind, and upload the extra content to the internet instead. Smart.

[Excerpt]

Keith Olbermann And Rachel Maddow NOT Going Head To Head Anymore

Keith Olbermann announced Thursday that his show will no longer cut into Rachel Maddow's opening minutes—a seeming result of pressure his fans had put on him. . .

Read more at: Huffington Post