Keith Olbermann is fired by Current TV and immediately promises to sue
Eliot Spitzer slated to replace Olbermann as host as notoriously rocky 18-month relationship with Current comes to an end
A New York artist, Roc Cayard, put it most pithily: "Keith Olberman," he tweeted, omitting the final "n" of the notoriously cantankerous TV presenter's name, "is now part of the 99%".
And so Olbermann now is, having been unceremoniously dumped as primetime newscaster by Current TV, Al Gore's liberal television channel. Barely a year after he was taken on to rejuvenate the ailing cable channel, Current's owners made clear that they had had enough of the endless bickering between them and their errant star.
In an open letter posted on the Current TV website, former US vice-president Gore and his co-founder Joel Hyatt did little to disguise their feelings towards Olbermann. They wrote that they had created the channel in the spirit 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."
Olbermann, being Olbermann, chose to reply in a series of tweets which he streamed every 30 seconds. Olbermann being Olbermann, he was also pretty outspoken.
"The claims against me in Current's statement are untrue and will be prosed so in the legal actions I will be filing against them presently," he tweeted. "In due course, the truth of the ethics of Mr Gore and Mr Hyatt will come out."
For good measure he added, in his 10th tweet, that his decision to join the channel had been a "sincere and well-intentioned gesture on my part, but in retrospect a foolish one".
Olbermann's departure hardly came as a surprise to New York's medialand. He'd previously burnt his bridges with MSNBC, which he left abruptly last year.
Then relations between Olbermann and Current reached rock bottom in January when he virtually went on strike, refusing to present election night shows in protest at the production glitches his 8pm show, Countdown, was experiencing.
They got through that little difficulty, but Olbermann expressed his disdain in other ways by no longer wearing a tie for the camera and growing a beard.
"There was always stress between Keith and his lawyers, and Current and their lawyers. They weren't on the same page," said someone familiar with the channel. "Keith is Keith. There are few people he gets along with."
His replacement will be a man who has also had a troubled track record: Eliot Spitzer. At least Spitzer, who was himself famously argumentative when he was New York governor, appears to have acquired a degree of humility since his fall from grace in a prostitution scandal.
Today's events leave two intriguing questions hanging over Manhattan: can Spitzer - who was not hugely well received critically for his shortlived CNN show Parker Spitzer ? revive the fortunes of Gore's television venture?
And will Olbermann ? who has just lost a $50m five-year deal ? find a way to claw himself back into the 1%?
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