NBC & MSNBC: You Knew He Was A Snake Before You Let Him (Back) In

Category: Blowhards. Today's contestant: Keith Olbermann.

NBC and MSNBC are reaping what they sowed by letting pathological Keith Olbermann back in the house in 2003 after he walked in 1998.

Olbermann's got  the suits by the balls - all the way up to GE chair Jeffrey Immelt.  

City File - It's Back To Business as Usual For Keith Olbermann:  "... some of the most annoyed people around are the NBC staffers who are getting increasingly fed up with Olbermann's antics....  insiders at MSNBC and NBC News aren't too happy with Olbermann... His attempt to cover up the backroom deal [the FOX/GE-engineered cease-fire between O'Reilly & instigator Olbermann] and then lie about its existence—in the face of evidence to the contrary—was viewed as a typically ego-centric move on Olbermann's part, one that served his own personal interests at the expense of MSNBC's credibility.

RE:  Richard Wolffe:  That Olbermann was quick to put the blame on his colleagues didn't sit very well with MSNBC insiders, we hear. The handful of lies and overall feeling that Olbermann had reignited a war that could have been brought to a close didn't do much to endear him to his colleagues either. Especially since Olbermann's numbers have been headed downward for months now, and there was a general feeling that a little change wouldn't be such a bad thing. Although MSNBC management had expected to see ratings come down from their 2008 election highs, the drop-off has been more pronounced than execs at the network anticipated. Changing up the Countdown formula could have been to MSNBC's advantage.

One other point that sticks in the craw of some MSNBC staffers is that Olbermann's ratings began to fall off right around Olbermann renegotiated his contract with the network, a deal that immediately made him one of NBC's highest-paid news personalities. In November 2008, NBC Universal agreed to rip up his old contract, worth an estimated $4 million a year, and offered him a new one that nearly doubled his annual salary to $7.5 million a year through 2013. The timing certainly worked out well for Olbermann. Less so for NBC Universal and MSNBC, which has watched as the show's ratings dip and has seen Olbermann turn into more of a greater liability than they imagined.

Unfortunately for NBC execs, there's little they do to fix the situation. MSNBC depends heavily on Olbermann, a fact made clear when he was told to tone down his rhetoric: According to the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, Olbermann indicated he'd be prepared to walk out the door if NBC president Jeff Zucker forced him to make substantial changes to his show as part of any secret deal with Fox News. (Not that Olbermann hasn't threatened to quit on several occasions in the past. He has.) It's hard to imagine where Olbermann could go if he decided to leave. And yet at the same time, NBC would be hard-pressed to fire him—even if he continues to play the rogue and ignore the directives of senior management.

That MSNBC remains beholden to Olbermann has never escaped the Countdown host himself, leaving him with a measure of power at NBC that he's never been shy about exercising. Case in point: Last week, Page Six reported that Katy Tur, Olbermann's girlfriend, recently started reporting for WNBC—a second gig in addition to her work at the NBC-owned Weather Channel—and wondered if Olbermann had anything to do with "boosting the news cutie's ascension." Indeed he did, a source tells us. We hear the new side gig followed Olbermann's complaints to NBC execs about Tur's role at the Weather Channel and the fact that Tur had been assigned to the channel's Vortex2 team, which goes out and chases tornados across the country. Olbermann, we understand, informed his bosses that the job was putting Tur "in danger" and he was deeply concerned about her safety, making it clear that he expected her to be reassigned. That will happen eventually. In the meantime, it's worth noting that her stint chasing storms hasn't been all bad. It did earn her a recent trip to Mount Rushmore...