(Headline USA) MSNBC considered bringing back disgraced host Keith Olbermann to replace Rachel Maddow after she left the network for an extended break, according to the Daily Beast.
NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell and NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde were in talks with Olbermann, who was dropped from the network in 2011, but their plans to bring him back fell through after Maddow opposed the idea, Olbermann said.
“I offered to have her production company ‘produce’ the show,” Olbermann said. “Would give her proxy control and a f***ton of money, but she and Phil Griffin refused,” he said, referring to the former president of MSNBC and consultant for Maddow’s production company.
“I do not expect to continue negotiations with the successors to this management team,” he added. “Management is worse than asleep at the switch.”
Maddow left MSNBC in January for a hiatus from her nightly show to work on other projects. She plans to return to the network but has not said when.
Another candidate rumored to be potential a fill-in for Maddow is White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who plans to leave her role in the Biden administration before the end of the year.
Olbermann was suspended from MSNBC in 2010 after network executives discovered he had been donating to political candidates in violation of NBC’s ethics policies. The next year, MSNBC abruptly dropped his contract.
Olbermann has also admitted that executives caught him gossiping about the fate of his then-boss Jeff Zucker, who was recently forced to resign at CNN.
“There was a lot of speculation about what would happen,” Olbermann recalled. “One surprisingly accurate bit of speculation on every floor of the building was, ‘I betcha they don’t keep Jeff.’ And apparently, he heard that I had said this. I was there and I was a convenient punching bag and everybody would believe everything they said about me. And so off I went.”
