Pbenjay's Blog

BIG Bad Parents

Why is the BIG question as to the abrupt exit of Keith Olberman from MSNBC‘s extremely popular show, COUNTDOWN with Keith Olberman.  There can be no doubt that his 8pm time slot was by far the most watched and was so proven in survey results time after time.  Is this media fickleness? NO!

Is this a good business decision? DOUBTFUL! He has two years left in his contract at a salary of roughly $7M per year, so clearly paying someone NOT to work is not good business.  I wouldn’t mind being fired if I could get paid $7M per year and not work, but that’s another story all together.

Word on the street is that COMCAST didn’t like his defiance, his independence – I guess they were strict parents.  Oh and yes they are the parents because COMCAST  acquired NBC and along with it of course, MSNBC.  What a shame!  Censorship in any newscast whether it be from a mainstream network anchor or a broadcast personality with a view is a terrible thing.

It’s one of the reasons my husband and I never watch movies on certain channels because not only are they broken up irreverently with commercials they are also edited to eliminate any offensive or deemed to be offensive words.  In other words, no pun intended, and actually in those words – somebody in some office high in the sky is deciding what I can and cannot watch or hear!  Mmmmm if my memory serves me right, that has always been the forerunner of a dictatorship in the making.

The web is full of news today about this very sad event, you can find thousands of comments on Twitter, most lamenting this terrible turn of events.  I hope there is a backlash, that there is some Peter Finch in all of us.

For me, it would be hard not to continue to watch MSNBC because I really do like Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews and Lawrence O’Donnell.  So I have to think about how to let the mega media company know I’m not happy with their actions.  I know we all think what can I do and I’m only one person so it won’t count but we also know that if all of us one persons do something, somebody will take notice!  For years I had ABC News as my home page on my computer but recently abandoned it because I couldn’t click on any article without activating some horrifically loud commercial about something I didn’t want to hear AND the mute button was never visible, I would have to exit that screen if I could find which one of their stupid pop up ads was talking.  I wonder what thinktank came up with that brainstorm?

What can we do? Write to the corporation? Write to the sponsors of MSNBC – YES !  “Follow the money” – you remember those famous words uttered over and over again by Deep Throat – that’s where it hurts, that’s what gets their attention; Money talks, everything else walks. Check out the blog later, I will try to compile a list of sponsors that may be less than pleased by this stupid act of parental control.