Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [208]
HERB GRANATH:
I was enraged by Olbermann. Guys like that just piss me off, you know, because there’s no loyalty. It’s just me, me, me. Of course you have to take care of yourself, but at the same time, there’s a way to do it and a way not to do it. He chose the way not to do it, in my estimation. And yet he was very popular, so Steve didn’t want to immediately cut his head off. But eventually, the guy dug himself a deep hole. There was no choice but to get rid of him.
BILL WOLFF:
He didn’t get along with the management? He lived for that. That’s who Keith is. Keith and authority don’t get along—ever. Well, let’s say this: they don’t get along for extended periods of time. There are going to be times when Keith battles authority, but he can also be one of the most loyal employees. Do not take a shot at Keith’s guys; he will protect them, always. He is a total team player, actually. But he bucked authority in Bristol. There’s no question; he made it hard for them. He was their best guy and he was hard to manage—I mean hard! Keith is a dark guy. If you take everything Keith says at face value, you will find your reason for living diminished.
KEITH OLBERMANN:
Everybody assumes there was a constant state of war there. There were wars, but not continuous. I didn’t go along with that cockamamy ESPN2 idea or split my days off to keep doing radio because I was a bad employee. In that place, my team player skills were no lower than B-minus.
Puckishly titled The Big Show—the wry nickname they gave SportsCenter when memorably co-anchoring it—Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick’s dual memoir was an attempt to put between covers the kind of crowd-pleasing tomfoolery they did during their years on the air together. It was subtitled “A Tribute to SportsCenter,” and the authors vowed to donate a portion of the proceeds to the family of Tom Mees.
ESPN protocol requires on-air talent to get management’s permission before appearing on other networks, and though Olbermann knew the rule, he didn’t bother to ask anybody before joining former ESPN comrade Craig Kilborn on Comedy Central’s Daily Show to promote the book. Olbermann’s acknowledgment of the rule consisted of asking Kilborn’s audience to “keep it a secret” that he’d been there.
Olbermann further irked ESPN officials at the end of the show when, asked by Kilborn to name “the most godforsaken place” in the eastern United States, Olbermann blurted out “Bristol, Connecticut.” For these offenses, ESPN’s John Walsh suspended Olbermann for two weeks—with pay—even though Walsh claimed that of course he would have given Olbermann permission if only he’d asked in advance.
BOB LEY:
Olbermann was finally given a couple of weeks off when his behavior had just become intolerable. And don’t think it didn’t bother a lot of people; this was a paid two weeks off. The message being sent? “For misbehaving, he gets another two weeks off with pay to think about whether he wants to stay here or take a better offer.” And he took the better offer [from Fox].
HOWARD KATZ:
Keith is as talented as anybody I’ve ever worked with. He is a brilliant writer, but he was a terribly unhappy person while he was up in Bristol. First of all, he was single. He didn’t drive. He was living in Southington, Connecticut. What kind of social life can you possibly have? He was not a happy camper up there, and it showed. People just didn’t want to work with him anymore; he was an incredibly negative force in the workplace. He was tearing the newsroom apart. Keith had to fight management on every single point. As brilliant as he was, he was a terribly destructive force.
I had done everything I thought possible to try to build a personal