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Keith Olbermann said he “screwed up” by taking a job with Current TV, but he plans to make the channel pay for firing him.
In Olbermann’s first TV interview since he was dismissed last week by Current, he was asked by David Letterman to assess his chances of getting any money due him. After reportedly signing a five-year, 50 million dollars contract with Current, he was there less than a year.
Olbermann referred back to Conan O’Brien’s legal battle with NBC over “The Tonight Show,” which ended with a reported $45 million exit settlement for O’Brien. “She’s my lawyer” – Olbermann said, smiling.
Entertainment attorney Patricia Glaser represented O’Brien during his severance fight.
During his appearance Tuesday on CBS’ “Late Show,” Olbermann compared himself to an expensive chandelier that ended up without a good home because of problems at Current — and his failure to see them.
“I screwed up really big on this. Let’s just start there” – Olbermann said. But he wasn’t the only one, he indicated, offering a home-building analogy.

Keith Olbermann.

This just in from the “cautionary tales from the media” department – lessons from the now former Current TV talk show host, Keith Olbermann’s appearance Tuesday night on “The Late Show with David Letterman.” The salient narrative emerged when the also former MSNBC talk show host went – how shall we say? – architectural. He was explaining to the late-night host what went wrong with his less-than-a-year stint at Al Gore’s television network.
“Just walking around with a 10 million dollars chandelier isn’t going to do anybody a lot of good, and it’s not going to do any good to the chandelier” – he explained, adding: “And then it turned out we didn’t have a lot to put the house on, to put the chandelier in, or a building permit, and I should have known that.”
“You’re the chandelier?” Mr. Letterman said.
Now, there is a certain order to the way things play out when media marriages go bad. But if even Letterman (who is usually a pretty quick study) has to clarify what the heck a guest is talking about, then Mr. Olbermann needs some pointers on which playbook he is actually in, say some observers of this latest public divorce.
“I wouldn’t compare him to a $10 million chandelier” – says Jason Maloni, senior vice president at Levick Strategic Communications in Washington.The better comparison would be former NFL player Terrell Owens, he adds. “Charlie Sheen comes to mind as well.” All these figures have plenty of talent, he says, but like Mr. Owens, “ultimately, the head coaches just decide they are not worth the trouble of their huge demands and egos.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HmE2IAfmrE

Following a turbulent year, Al Gore’s Current TV finally parted ways Friday with fiery host Keith Olbermann.
“Countdown” (Olbermann’s show) was canceled Friday, and was to be replaced by another featuring former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. In a statement, Gore, the former vice president and Nobel laureate, and his business partner Joel Hyatt took an extraordinary swipe at their outspoken host, to whom they had reportedly given a $10 million paycheck as well as an ownership stake in hopes he would raise the tiny network’s profile.
Gore and Hyatt said Current was 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.” A Current spokeswoman declined to elaborate.
Olbermann (who has endured rocky tenures with a series of previous employers ranging from ESPN to MSNBC) quickly lashed back on Twitter, calling Current a “failure” and describing his decision to join it as “foolish.”
“Keith Olbermann’s termination is baseless” – said Patty Glaser, Olbermann’s lawyer. “We will sue them for their improper conduct. They made a bad decision; they can expect a bad result.”
“Countdown” did not deliver big ratings for Current, with viewership settling around 200.000 people per night, according to Nielsen. When the program was on MSNBC, it had drawn about five times that number.
The network informed Olbermann on Thursday morning that his services were no longer needed. A source familiar with the situation said bosses grew frustrated after the host took repeated unexcused absences from “Countdown,” including the night before the March 6 Super Tuesday primaries, when interest in his brand of political talk was at a premium.
But Olbermann and his bosses had been quarreling for months. He was so frustrated by technical glitches at the network last year that at one point he took to doing his show in a darkened studio, a stunt meant to mock the lighting problems that dogged “Countdown.” Earlier this year, he ended up boycotting Current’s coverage of the Iowa caucuses, in a spat that went public but was supposedly patched up later.
Just two months ago, Current bosses assured journalists that the previous conflicts with their star host had been settled.