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Hot Heir

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OLBERMANN IN FULL The Countdown host shows his serious side

He's actually the—

The general manager [of MSNBC], right, but we rarely interact. As far as I know he works on dayside programming. Phil Griffin runs the network. He is the vice president of NBC [News] and my original producer in television.

What the hell is Abrams doing giving quotes about you to everyone from the Washington Post to the LA Times, then?
You got me. No, really, it's an awfully tough tightrope to walk here, and you get people who are newscasters who can't do any of the humor. And then there are people who are humorists who can't do any of the news. This is a problem. I've never had a problem going from one to the other. For me it's the skill that I've always brought to the table. I did it at SportsCenter. First, I did it for MSNBC. And, frankly, I did it for college radio. The idea is: Rarely do you go an entire hour when life is one tone, so why should you do an entire newscast that, in an hour of time, is all the same? There are occasions, like 9/11, when, yes, it is all one tone until further notice. But it's not like that a lot, thank goodness.

Is your style of broadcast, mixing news with opinion and humor, a rehash of an old formula or something altogether revolutionary?
The idea of mixing it this way—I'll take credit for the recipe, but realistically, this is what good journalism, whether it's in radio, television, the Internet, or magazines, has always been. To me it's a very old thing. The original idea for this came to me the first week I ever filled in for Paul Harvey, which is one of my many former jobs. He basically had to make it an ebb-and-flow between the serious and not-so-serious and touch on economics and touch on entertainment and touch on war. That was the thing that got me thinking about this. But I've heard full Edward R. Murrow newscasts from the '50s and they were straightforward readings of news and a commentary. Or Lowell Thomas: straightforward newscasts, some sort of commentary, and then some humor at the end. We live in such times of specialization. I think there is a rebound effect where I need to do something that is more kind of a general survey.

"This guy [Chad Conrad Castagana] obviously has a lot of problems, and one of them probably is a disturbing hero-worship of Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin"Is that not what pundits like Hannity & Colmes or commentators like Lou Dobbs are doing?
I think Lou has basically done one comment everyday for the last three years. We get it! They've broken the borders! You're trying to sell a book called Broken Borders—at Border's! I get it! Hannity & Colmes, I don't even know what to say about that. That's the first time I've ever been compared with that show. Ultimately, this is a news broadcast, and when the news is sufficient, we throw the jokes out the window. We will do it straight. I did the elections straight. I did the blackouts straight. I did the Pope straight. There doesn't have to be humor mixed into it. The whole idea of conveying a journalistic standard is great, but if nobody watches it, what's the point?

Ever see taking Countdown into Daily Show or Colbert Report territory?
I don't know that I could ever do that. I admire what Jon and Stephen do. I have told Stephen that I think he is just too good. I've seen right-wing blogs that have posted things he's said and taken him seriously.... They didn't even notice that he'd already sunk his stiletto into them. I like to say that we are to some degree like the Daily Show, but for half an hour we're not allowed to screw with the news at all. The bar is a little higher over here. Well, the jokes don't have to be as good, but at least 50 percent of the show has to have actually happened.

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