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http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2011-06-19-keith-olbermann-countdown-current-tv_n.htmWho initiated the most recent split? (Long pause.) "Ultimately, me," he says, though it was finalized so abruptly that he told his staff during a commercial break on Jan. 21, midway through what would become his final show on MSNBC.
He had reached that conclusion well before his brief suspension in November for donating to three congressional campaigns. And he says the friction at MSNBC intensified after the 2008 death of Tim Russert, "the human scaffolding around the circumstances that were changing" who "ran interference for me."
His reps mused over his next career move, from a satellite radio show to an Internet platform to a network with a part-time news presence such as BBC America. Ultimately, "we used as a model what AMC did," which was to take Mad Men, an HBO reject, and nurture it into a beloved cult hit that redefined the once-moribund network as a top destination for cable dramas. "We thought, maybe there's an AMC out there that wants to step into news.
"There were a lot of things I interpreted as signs. Not just NBC, but the whole concept of news as a commodity being sold by a multinational corporation" with stakes in theme parks and jet engines. He feared interference after learning his longstanding feud with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, who made NBC parent GE an on-air target, led top executives to meet in search of a cease-fire. "As those signposts got that much more numerous … I began to evaluate that it was the right time to go."
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