No surprise, the guy was apparently a real bastard to work with.
From the article linked to in Dewey Finn’s post above:
Inside the offices of MSNBC, staff members grew more restive about Mr. Olbermann’s temperament. Some days Mr. Olbermann threatened not to come to work at all and a substitute anchor had to be notified to be on standby.
Mr. Olbermann was within one move of being fired in November after he was suspended for making donations to Democratic Congressional candidates. He threatened to make an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America” to protest the suspension; Mr. Zucker was prepared to fire him on the spot if he did, according to a senior NBC Universal executive who declined to be identified in discussing confidential deliberations.
The pattern of great promise followed by eventual disaffection was established early in Mr. Olbermann’s career. As a young sports reporter for UPI Television, he was fired for telling his boss “this is the minor leagues here.” In the early 1980s, he had a short, stormy tenure at CNN.
Watch it? They live it.
The comparison of Olbermann to O’Reilly isn’t relevant; MSNBC’s ratings are lower than Fox’s in general. It’s possible he could have been worth his money even with 40 percent of O’Reilly’s ratings. It sounds more like he’d fought with management too many times over the years and one party (or both) decided it was time to cut the cord.
