Sometimes one skirmish can lead to all out war and it seems we're headed that way with Fox and MSNBC. It all began with the silly War on Christmas reporting by John Gibson (who has a book on it to sell) and Bill O'Reilly. Olbermann noticed, took a stock photo of O'Reilly, put a Santa hat on him, and awarded him "Worst Person in the World" multiple times during December, even leading to an unprecedented trifecta award of "Worse," "Worser," and "Worst" one night. Gibson won his own award when he popped on Janet Parshall's Salem talk show and made comments about people who worship the wrong god will have to answer for it.
O'Reilly put MSNBC on his "smear merchants" list, primarily because of Olbermann and told viewers that his 4am Factor rerun delivers a higher audience of viewers than Olbermann's live show does 50% of the time. Gibson went more personal, denying he ever made the comments (oops, they were recorded by Media Matters - O'Reilly's favorite 'smear merchant') and accused Olbermann of never being his friend when he worked at MSNBC.
Viewers are now squirming in their chairs as things have escalated to soap opera proportions. Olbermann says he can't understand what happened to Gibson - "he used to be such a nice guy" and Gibson says he doubts Olbermann was ever truly his friend. Olbermann retorts that Gibson has lost his credibility when he was caught in a lie, compared him to terrorists, and told him he needs to resign. Next week Gibson will probably have Olbermann burned in effigy on the air.
Anchor disputes happen from time to time, but I can't recall them ever getting this public and personal. O'Reilly and Gibson won't say "Olbermann" by name, presumably because it could cause MSNBC to have 150 viewers instead of 100 as people check him out (and he has one of the best news/humor shows on MSNBC), but now that the rest of the media has noticed (it was noted on CNN's Reliable Sources this morning), I suspect we'll be hearing more of this in the days ahead.
Here's some video:
http://www.mytempdir.com/356321
O'Reilly put MSNBC on his "smear merchants" list, primarily because of Olbermann and told viewers that his 4am Factor rerun delivers a higher audience of viewers than Olbermann's live show does 50% of the time. Gibson went more personal, denying he ever made the comments (oops, they were recorded by Media Matters - O'Reilly's favorite 'smear merchant') and accused Olbermann of never being his friend when he worked at MSNBC.
Viewers are now squirming in their chairs as things have escalated to soap opera proportions. Olbermann says he can't understand what happened to Gibson - "he used to be such a nice guy" and Gibson says he doubts Olbermann was ever truly his friend. Olbermann retorts that Gibson has lost his credibility when he was caught in a lie, compared him to terrorists, and told him he needs to resign. Next week Gibson will probably have Olbermann burned in effigy on the air.
Anchor disputes happen from time to time, but I can't recall them ever getting this public and personal. O'Reilly and Gibson won't say "Olbermann" by name, presumably because it could cause MSNBC to have 150 viewers instead of 100 as people check him out (and he has one of the best news/humor shows on MSNBC), but now that the rest of the media has noticed (it was noted on CNN's Reliable Sources this morning), I suspect we'll be hearing more of this in the days ahead.
Here's some video:
http://www.mytempdir.com/356321