Keith Olbermann ‘very pleased’ with premiere ratings

Joe Pompeo
·Media Reporter

On a conference call with reporters last Friday, Keith Olbermann made it pretty clear how he feels about the ratings for his Current TV premiere: The night one numbers are irrelevant. But Current has nonetheless released his viewer count in the 25-54 age demographic preferred by advertisers.

Among that audience, Olbermann attracted 179,000 sets of eyeballs Monday night, according to data from the Nielsen Co., which began rating Current in the fourth quarter of 2010. His former network and now primary rival, MSNBC, where Lawrence O'Donnell took over the 8 p.m. time slot after Olbermann exited the network in January, had 237,000 viewers.

For some context, "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News, meanwhile, had 735,000 viewers among the 25-54 set; CNN drew a mere 89,000.

"We're very pleased," Olbermann said through a Current spokeswoman. "But like I said last week, it's one night. We'll need a couple of weeks to know where we're starting, and we're truly interested in next year and especially 2013."

The spokeswoman added: "We're really happy with last night's debut of 'Countdown.' The feedback we've received from viewers, advertisers and our distribution partners about Keith Olbermann's show on Current has been extremely positive."

Current did not specify how many viewers watched the premiere in total; nor would a spokeswoman at Nielsen.

Current TV, which Al Gore launched in 2005, is available in far fewer U.S. households than the cable news stalwarts, and its prime time viewership is said to be in the 20,000-30,000 range. But the network is hoping that Olbermann, who had been MSNBC's highest-rated host, will build up its audience.

On last week's call, Olbermann noted that "Countdown" was only clocking around 200,000 viewers when MSNBC first started airing it in 2003; it was averaging more than a million as of his abrupt departure from the network earlier this year.

"There are no set targets. If the people in the truck from which we are directing this show, and there's like 10 of them in there, if they can see the show, that will be a satisfactory audience total for Monday night, and we'll go from there," he said. "We're in this for the long haul."