5 Responses to Turn on Current TV now. Olbermann up next.

1. Kelly Canfield June 20th, 2011 at 8:22 pm 1

   Why do you care if Olbermann is on? He made more money than Maddow, which you ask if she’s a “Sideshow Bob Making a Buck?”

   You also asked ““What is the value of your Wall Street stock portfolio?” and indeed, GE stock is likely a piece in KO’s separation agreement. He’s certainly not doing the CurrentTV gig for free, granted I can’t find compensation for his CurrentTV gig at the present.

   Plus a major investor in CurrentTV, aside from Gore, is Ron Burkle, on the list of the Forbes 400 List of richest Americans, with quite the portfolio and list of transactions:

   Burkle’s investments and transactions include:

   Sold Dominick’s chain to Safeway in 1998 for over $200 million in profits;
   Owns 20.7% stake in Americold Realty Trust;
   Leveraged buyouts of Jurgensen’s, Fred Meyer, Food 4 Less, and Ralphs supermarket chains, and sold to Kroger for $13.5 billion;
   Signed Fleming as sole food supplier to Kmart;
   Majority stake in Pathmark grocery stores;
   Cyrk, the former Beanie Baby promotion agency;
   Merged Alliance Entertainment with Source Interlink;
   Invested $100 million in Sean Combs’s (P. Diddy) Sean John clothing line;
   Purchased Enthusiast Media publications and assets of Primedia for $1.2 billion;
   Burkle’s investment firm, Yucaipa Cos., owns 18.7% of the common stock of Barnes & Noble.[15] In early 2010 he sought to raise his stake to 37% without triggering the shareholders’ rights plan;[16][17][18] Chairman Len Riggio, with 27.8% ownership of the bookseller’s common stock, is Barnes & Noble’s largest shareholder;[19]
   Donated $750 million to the Renner Burkle Fund;
   Owns 6% stake in American Apparel, Inc.[20]

   So I’d like to know why KO is OK, and Rachel is not.

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2. cmaukonen June 20th, 2011 at 8:26 pm 2

   I do not have cable and have no intention of getting it or satellite so I guess I will have to catch it after words or something.

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3. Liz Berry June 20th, 2011 at 9:03 pm 3

   In response to Kelly Canfield @ 1

   I agree with many of your observations/reports/assessments.

   Did I write that I liked him any better than Maddow? No. I sometimes even watch people like Bill O’Reilly and Chris Wallace–just to see what kind of crap they are putting out. Olbermann to me is about 50/50 and so is Rachel Maddow for that matter.

   Olbermann is interesting to me because he is no longer tied to General Electric. That huge monster, the largest war contractor in the world, who makes and breaks presidential candidates, was not able to crush him. And that makes him very special. In my opinion, GE makes people like Gore and Burkle look like pussycats. But you are right in that all of them are all wrapped up in the same Wall Street corporate cocoon and bear very close watching.

   Yes he is not free from Corporate America as you pointed out. And, like Rachel, I’m sure if we were able to see their portfolios that both would include hundreds of thousands of dollars of GE stock. In 2.5 years Rachel Maddow went from a woman who did shows on Air America and landscaping on the side to a mainstream media pundit with a net worth of $12million. I’m sure Olbermann’s fortune is even greater since he was at it longer, but if Rachel sticks with GE I’m sure she will catch up.

   And Olbermann, for all his obvious faults has done something that to my knowledge, none of the other liberal pundits have done. He used his show and his money as a platform to raise millions of dollars for those healthcare clinics. If it were not for his efforts, hundreds of Americans would not have gotten critical health care that they needed.

   I take hope, if not in Olbermann’s show, at least in regard to CURRENT’s programing, however, for no other reason than the piece of investigative journalism that they did on Vanguard tonight regarding Oxycontin. But who knows? They have a good chance to be just another dud like the rest of the media.

   We shall see.

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4. Liz Berry June 20th, 2011 at 9:13 pm 4

   In response to cmaukonen @ 2

   It’s just part of my Internet connection package. But now I’m glad I have it because I’m curious to see if CURRENT will grow into something decent or just more of the same.

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5. sadlyyes June 21st, 2011 at 1:04 am 5

   In response to Liz Berry @ 3

   wow no wonder those punditz are all sold out…that kinda dough

   still love KO he has balls……… took on Darth

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