Current TV fires Keith Olbermann, announces that Eliot Spitzer will join its lineup

Cur­rent TV, the pro­gres­sive cable net­work found­ed by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, announced min­utes ago that it has fired Kei­th Olber­mann, its best-known per­son­al­i­ty and chief news offi­cer. As is often the case when media com­pa­nies decide to part ways with a host, Olber­man­n’s dis­missal is effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly — he won’t be giv­en a chance to sign off or host a farewell show.

Cur­ren­t’s cofounders pub­lished a let­ter to view­ers announc­ing their deci­sion.

To the View­ers of Current:

We cre­at­ed Cur­rent to give voice to those Amer­i­cans who refuse to rely on cor­po­rate-con­trolled media and are seek­ing an authen­tic pro­gres­sive out­let.  We are more com­mit­ted to those goals today than ever before.

Cur­rent was also found­ed on the val­ues of respect, open­ness, col­le­gial­i­ty, and loy­al­ty to our view­ers. Unfor­tu­nate­ly these val­ues are no longer reflect­ed in our rela­tion­ship with Kei­th Olber­mann and we have end­ed it.

We are mov­ing ahead by hon­or­ing Cur­ren­t’s val­ues. Cur­rent has a fun­da­men­tal oblig­a­tion to deliv­er news pro­gram­ming with a pro­gres­sive per­spec­tive that our view­ers can count on being avail­able dai­ly — espe­cial­ly now, dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign. Cur­rent exists because our audi­ence desires the kind of per­spec­tive, insight and com­men­tary that is not eas­i­ly found else­where in this time of big media consolidation.

As we move toward this sum­mer’s polit­i­cal con­ven­tions and the gen­er­al elec­tion in the fall, Cur­rent is mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant new addi­tions to our broad­casts. We have just debuted six hours of new pro­gram­ming each week­day with Bill Press (“Full Court Press” at 6 am ET/3 am PT) and Stephanie Miller (“Talk­ing Lib­er­al­ly” at 9 am ET/6 pm PT).

We’re very excit­ed to announce that begin­ning tonight, for­mer New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer will host “View­point with Eliot Spitzer,” at 8 pm ET/5 pm PT. Eliot is a vet­er­an pub­lic ser­vant and an astute observ­er of the issues of the day. He has impor­tant opin­ions and insights and he rel­ish­es the kind of con­struc­tive dis­course that our view­ers will appre­ci­ate this elec­tion year. We are con­fi­dent that our view­ers will be able to count on Gov. Spitzer to deliv­er crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion on a dai­ly basis.

All of these addi­tions to Cur­ren­t’s line­up are aimed at achiev­ing one sim­ple goal — the goal that has always been cen­tral to Cur­ren­t’s mis­sion: To tell sto­ries no one else will tell, to speak truth to pow­er, and to influ­ence the con­ver­sa­tion of democ­ra­cy on behalf of those whose voic­es are too sel­dom heard. We, and every­one at Cur­rent, want to thank our view­ers for their con­tin­ued stead­fast support.

Sin­cere­ly,

Al Gore & Joel Hyatt
Cur­ren­t’s Founders

The New York Times, which broke the news of Olber­man­n’s ouster, reports that Cur­ren­t’s man­agers unan­i­mous­ly agreed that the net­work should fire him, indi­cat­ing that the rela­tion­ship had gone pret­ty far south.

Inci­den­tal­ly, this isn’t the first time that Olber­mann has been fired. His tenure at each of the oth­er major net­works he has worked at (MSNBC, Fox Sports Net, ESPN) end­ed in acri­mo­ny after ten­sion between Olber­mann and his boss­es boiled over. Olber­man­n’s last gig, with MSNBC, last­ed over half a decade, but his part­ner­ship with Cur­rent has now end­ed after less than a year.

Though we don’t know what hap­pened behind the scenes at Cur­rent that led to the falling-out between Olber­mann and Cur­rent TV lead­er­ship, it’s prob­a­bly safe to con­clude that Gore, Hyatt, and their exec­u­tive team found Olber­mann dif­fi­cult to work with, and ulti­mate­ly con­clud­ed the sour­ing rela­tion­ship was irreparable.

With­in an hour of the pub­li­ca­tion of the open let­ter above, Olber­mann had begun lash­ing out at Cur­rent on Twit­ter, and vow­ing a retal­ia­to­ry lawsuit.

In a series of tweets, he wrote:

I’d like to apol­o­gize to my view­ers and my staff for the fail­ure of Cur­rent TV.

Edi­to­ri­al­ly, Count­down had nev­er been bet­ter. But for more than a year I have been implor­ing Al Gore and Joel Hyatt to resolve our issues inter­nal­ly, while I’ve been not pub­li­ciz­ing my com­plaints, and keep­ing the show alive for the sake of its loy­al view­ers and even more loy­al staff. Nev­er­the­less, Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt, instead of abid­ing by their promis­es and oblig­a­tions and invest­ing in a qual­i­ty news pro­gram, final­ly thought it was more eco­nom­i­cal to try to get out of my contract.

It goes almost with­out say­ing that the claims against me implied in Cur­ren­t’s state­ment are untrue and will be proved so in the legal actions I will be fil­ing against them present­ly. To under­stand Mr. Hyatt’s “val­ues of respect, open­ness, col­le­gial­i­ty and loy­al­ty,” I encour­age you to read of a pre­vi­ous occa­sion Mr. Hyatt found him­self in court for hav­ing unjust­ly fired an employ­ee. That employee’s name was Clarence B. Cain.

In due course, the truth of the ethics of Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt will come out. For now, it is impor­tant only to again acknowl­edge that join­ing them was a sin­cere and well-inten­tioned ges­ture on my part, but in ret­ro­spect a fool­ish one. That lack of judg­ment is mine and mine alone, and I apol­o­gize again for it.

Sev­er­al asser­tions in this state­ment strike us as odd.

First, Olber­mann claims that “for more than a year I have been implor­ing Al Gore and Joel Hyatt to resolve our issues inter­nal­ly.” But Olber­man­n’s deal with Cur­rent was only final­ized in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary 2011.

If this claim is true, then it means Olber­man­n’s prob­lems with Cur­rent began just about the mil­lisec­ond the ink was dry on their con­tract — or not long after.

Olber­mann is basi­cal­ly say­ing he nev­er had a good rela­tion­ship with Gore or Hyatt. Well, whose fault is that? It takes two to tan­go, but Olber­mann has made a rep­u­ta­tion for him­self as being tough to work with. He’s been described as pas­sion­ate onscreen and ill-tem­pered off­screen. He’s report­ed­ly missed a lot of work late­ly, which pre­cip­i­tat­ed his removal.

Sec­ond, Olber­mann claims that he has “not [been] pub­li­ciz­ing my com­plaints” with Cur­rent TV lead­er­ship. But that’s not true. Olber­mann has talked on the record to enter­tain­ment indus­try reporters about his gripes with the net­work. Has Olber­mann for­got­ten this sto­ry filed by The Hol­ly­wood Reporter?

Third, does Olber­mann real­ly expect us to believe he was oust­ed because Gore and Hyatt thought it would be more “eco­nom­i­cal” to get rid of him? Count­down was pulling in Cur­ren­t’s high­est rat­ings. Ear­li­er this month, Hyatt char­ac­terised Olber­mann as “the big gun in our line­up” to the New York Times, and even described Cur­rent itself as “all on top of his shoulders”.

If Cur­rent thought they could depend on Olber­mann, why would they axe him? Cer­tain­ly not to save mon­ey. No com­pe­tent net­work exec­u­tive would sack its most valu­able per­son­al­i­ty just to save a few bucks.

If Olber­mann insist­ed on retain­ing con­trol of the “Count­down” name and brand in the con­tract he signed with Cur­rent last year (MSNBC allowed him to take those marks with him when he left), it’s pos­si­ble that the show will be con­tin­u­ing in some form on anoth­er net­work… though we won­der what tele­vi­sion exec­u­tive would want to take a chance on Olber­mann now.

If Olber­mann wants to con­tin­ue to be a broad­cast­er, per­haps he should relaunch Count­down as an Inter­net tele­vi­sion show. That way, he can be his own boss, and con­tin­ue to dis­cuss news, sports, and pol­i­tics in his trade­mark style on his terms.

We remain excit­ed about the future of Cur­rent TV even with­out Kei­th Olber­mann. A net­work has to be big­ger than one per­son or per­son­al­i­ty. To gar­ner good rat­ings, it needs a com­pelling line­up. And Cur­rent has put togeth­er some good new shows, like The War Room with Jen­nifer Granholm. Time will tell if it can be com­pet­i­tive with more estab­lished news net­works like MSNBC and CNN.