this came as a surprise. an unhappy surprise. i've been a faithful viewer if keith's 'countdown'. the bar at msnbc has been lowered a bit. well thanks for the eight years keith. you made it all easier to take.
NEW YORK — Commentator Keith Olbermann signed off his msnbc cable television show Friday night after nearly eight years.
"Msnbc and Keith Olbermann have ended our contract," Phil Griffin, president of msnbc, said Friday.
"Msnbc thanks Keith for his integral role in msnbc's success and we wish him well in his future endeavors," Griffin said.
Olbermann announced his departure before closing his show with a reading from a James Thurber novel, a Friday night tradition.
Recounting his move to msnbc after departing ESPN, Olbermann said, "I was supposed to fill in for the late Jerry Nachman for exactly three days. 49 days later there was a four-year contract for me to return to this nightly 8 PM time slot which I had fled four years earlier."
He noted that the show gradually established an anti-establishment position.
"The program grew thanks entirely to your support with great rewards for me and I hope for you," Olbermann told viewers.
"There were many occasions particularly in the last two and a half years where all that surrounded the show — but never the show itself — was just too much for me. But your support and loyalty and if I may use the word insistence ultimately required that I keep going."
Olbermann did not explain why he was leaving.
