See What Happens When You Aren't Looking?

So last night, I was looking through my Twitter updates and as usual, Keith Olbermann was posting his nightly show plugs.  I am not sure when I read his cryptic tweet about a last minute change to his Thurber segment, but it really did not matter since I was headed to dinner with friends for the evening.  Fast forward a few hours and while waiting for the husband to retrieve the car, I was looking through the Twitter feed again and spotted news tweets about Olbermann's final sign off as host of "Countdown".

Wow.

I cannot tell you how many years I watched this show and thus, how many other TV shows I missed because on any given day of the week, this is how I spent the 8pm primetime TV hour.  What in the world am I going to do now?

Sure he was over the top.  Sometimes his guests annoyed me.  Yes, he could be a pompous windbag (I could go on), but I LOVED his show.  And though a few months ago, I began to grow weary of his schtick in the aftermath of the 2010 midterms, I still tuned in occasionally.

Brief side note: I got into a mini-Twitter debate with Roland Martin about the dearth of brown faces as hosts of TV opinion shows and suggested that the solution might be for non-traditional outlets such as BET and TV One to beef up their news operations.  He bluntly told me that I was wrong...but failed to explain the success of former Air America talents Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz at MSNBC.  I mentioned how Maddow got her own show as a result of being a commentator on Countdown, so my question was whether this was really about brown folks not receiving the opportunity or whether there was some other explanation.

Now it seems that MSNBC has an opening...

Now back to Olbermann: I will miss his show, not just because I liked him, but also because his show was a place where black opinionators were featured on a regular basis.  He introduced us to Melissa Harris Perry (formerly Lacewell), Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Derrick Pitts, and Eugene Robinson (whom I saw the other night at the Kennedy Center).  Through their appearances, America got a different spin on the issues from voices that were reasonable and informed (in the case of Tyson and Pitts, we got two black astronomers discussing science in primetime).  He also gave Maddow a chance, which is significant because her show is the only female-lead opinion news show that does not focus on entertainment, celebrity trials and missing women. 

Thus, my larger point is that Keith Olbermann was a lot of things, but he deserves a lot of the credit for diversifying primetime opinion shows in more ways than just offering his liberal take on the issues.  So the real loss is not just his show, but his influence and willingness to use it to offer opportunities to others.