Keith Olbermann

Keith Theodore Olbermann (born January 27, 1959) is an American sports and political commentator and writer.

Olbermann spent the first 20 years of his career in sports journalism.

Olbermann was born January 27, 1959, in New York City, the son of Marie Katherine (née Charbonier), a preschool teacher, and Theodore Olbermann, a commercial architect.

He is of German ancestry.

Olbermann and his younger sister Jenna (b. 1968), were raised in a Unitarian household in the town of Hastings-on-Hudson in Westchester, New York.

He attended the Hackley School, a private Ivy League Preparatory school in nearby Tarrytown.

Olbermann became a devoted fan of baseball at a young age, a love he inherited from his mother, who was a lifelong New York Yankees fan.

As a teenager he often wrote about baseball card-collecting and appeared in many sports card-collecting periodicals of the mid-1970s.

After graduating from Hackley in 1975, he enrolled at Cornell University at the age of 16.

At college Olbermann served as sports director for WVBR, a student-run commercial radio station in Ithaca.

He is also referenced in Sports Collectors Bible, a 1979 book by Bert Sugar, which is considered one of the important early books for trading card collectors.

While at Hackley, Olbermann began his broadcasting career as a play-by-play announcer for WHTR.

Olbermann graduated from Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 1979 with a BS in communication.

He was a sports correspondent for CNN and for local TV and radio stations in the 1980s, winning the Best Sportscaster award from the California Associated Press three times.

Among the early stories he covered was the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, including the "Miracle on Ice."

In the early-to-mid 1980s he was a sportscaster on the old WNEW 1130-AM radio station in New York City.

Olbermann began his professional career at UPI and the RKO Radio Network before joining then-nascent CNN in 1981.

In 1984, he briefly worked as a sports anchor at WCVB-TV in Boston before heading to Los Angeles to work at KTLA and KCBS.

His work there earned him 11 Golden Mike Awards, and he was named best sportscaster by the California Associated Press three times.

he later co-authored a book with Patrick called The Big Show about their experiences working at SportsCenter; he also said that the short-lived ABC dramedy Sports Night was based on his time on SportsCenter with Patrick, ABC having been co-owned with ESPN since 1985 (ESPN now produces all sports coverage on ABC, which is branded ESPN on ABC).

In his last year with KCBS before moving east to work for ESPN, Olbermann's salary was $475,000 but started at "just over $150,000" with ESPN.

He made $350,000 at the end of his tenure at ESPN.

He co-hosted ESPN's SportsCenter from 1992 to 1997.

In 1992 Olbermann joined ESPN's SportsCenter, a position he held until 1997 with the exception of a period from 1993 to 1994 when he was at ESPN2.

He joined ESPN2 as its "marquee" personality to help launch the network.

He often co-hosted SportsCenter's 11:00 p.m. show with Dan Patrick, the two becoming a popular anchor team.

In 1995 Olbermann won a Cable ACE award for Best Sportscaster.

Early in 1997 Olbermann was suspended for two weeks after he made an unauthorized appearance on The Daily Show on Comedy Central with then-host and former ESPN colleague Craig Kilborn.

At one point in the show he referred to Bristol, Connecticut (ESPN's headquarters), as a "Godforsaken place".

From 1998 to 2001, he was a producer and anchor for Fox Sports Net and a host for Fox Sports' coverage of Major League Baseball.

From March 2003 to January 2011, Olbermann hosted the weeknight political commentary program Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC.

He received attention for his pointed criticism of American conservative and right-wing politicians and public figures.

Although he has frequently been described as a "liberal", he has often rejected being labelled politically, stating, "I'm not a liberal. I'm an American."

From 2011 to March 30, 2012, Olbermann was the chief news officer of the Current TV network and the host of a Current TV program also called Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

From July 2013 until July 2015 he hosted a late-afternoon show on ESPN2 and TSN2 called Olbermann, as well as TBS's Major League Baseball postseason coverage.

From September 2016 until November 2017, he hosted a web series for GQ, titled The Closer with Keith Olbermann, covering the 2016 U.S. presidential election, later renamed The Resistance with Keith Olbermann after the victory of Donald Trump.

In January 2018, Olbermann returned to ESPN's SportsCenter program, expanding in May to some baseball play-by-play work.

On October 6, 2020, he again resigned from ESPN to start a political commentary program on his YouTube channel.

On August 1, 2022, Olbermann relaunched Countdown with Keith Olbermann as a daily podcast with iHeartRadio.

It is described as a news-driven show featuring his trademark "Special Comment" political analysis, "The Worst Persons in the World" segment, and readings from the works of the humorist James Thurber.