In a New York Times magazine profile of the return to television of former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, writer David Carr reveals just how obsessed Olbermann is with being on camera.
At a Mets-Yankees game Carr attended with Olbermann in May, Olbermann made Carr switch seats with him so he could be better positioned to be featured in Fox Sports coverage of the game.
“Switch seats with me,” Carr reported Olbermann telling him. “I want to be in the Fox Sports shot of home plate…It’s fun to mess with them.”
Carr goes on to write, “Not only were we inches away from the field, but Olbermann was on television, messing with the heads of his sworn enemies at Fox. It was a wonderful place for him to be, second only to that lone seat in front of the camera. He has missed it.”
Another interesting tidbit revealed in the profile is that during his tenure at MSNBC, Olbermann’s erratic behavior forced the left-leaning cable news network to have guest hosts on standby in case Olbermann decided not to show up for his show.
(Olbermann dishes on new gig, others dish on Olbermann)
“There were times when he threatened not to come to work because of something someone said at his own station or in the press,” Carr writes. “It made for some tense moments, with substitute hosts on standby and very senior people spending hours talking him off a ledge and into the Town Car that would take him to the studio. And when he wasn’t threatening not to show up, he was threatening to quit.”