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The Real Jeff Shell-Keith Olbermann Saga

Behind the scenes, Olbermann has been privately jonesing to rejoin MSNBC for years, reaching out directly to Jeff Shell repeatedly. The whole situation simply manifests how bizarre things have gotten at the soon-to-be former House of Maddow.

Keith Olbermann
Photo by Taylor Hill/FilmMagic
Dylan Byers
March 17, 2022

Back in December 2019, on the day the news broke that Jeff Shell was going to become the chief executive of NBCUniversal, he received an email from Keith Olbermann, the former MSNBC host who was then working, for the third time in his career, at ESPN. The two men had known each other since the late 1990s, when Shell was the president of Fox’s cable networks and Olbermann was a Fox Sports anchor.