"Voices From Above Silence a Cable TV Feud"--that's the headline in Saturday's NYT, above the byline of one of the great Cable Gamers, Brian Stelter. Those voices, evidently, are Rupert Murdoch and Jeff Immelt, calling a cease-fire, or at least a little bit of a stand-down between Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann.
Here's the top of Brian's story:
It was a media cage fight, televised every weeknight at 8 p.m. But the match was halted when the blood started to spray executives in the high-priced seats.
For years Keith Olbermann of MSNBC had savaged his prime-time nemesis Bill O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel and accused Fox of journalistic malpractice almost nightly. Mr. O’Reilly in turn criticized Mr. Olbermann’s bosses and led an exceptional campaign against General Electric, the parent company of MSNBC.
It was perhaps the fiercest media feud of the decade and by this year, their bosses had had enough. But it took a fellow television personality with a neutral perspective to help bring it to at least a temporary end.
At an off-the-record summit meeting for chief executives sponsored by Microsoft in mid-May, the PBS interviewer Charlie Rose asked Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of G.E., and his counterpart at the News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, about the feud.
Both moguls expressed regret over the venomous culture between the networks and the increasingly personal nature of the barbs. Days later, even though the feud had increased the audience of both programs, their lieutenants arranged a cease-fire, according to four people who work at the companies and have direct knowledge of the deal.
NWS and GE, of course, work together on a variety of projects, most spectacularly, Hulu.com, the hugely successful go-to website for programming. And no doubt, also, there are many FCC-y concerns that unite the two companies. And there's the practical and immediate concern that something bad could happen to some of these people--this is, after all, a dangerous world, full of crazies, some of whom watch cable news and get ideas therefrom.
So TCG can see why this "ceasefire" happened--maybe even why it had to happen. And there's plenty to criticize outside of the media world. LIke, for example, Barack Obama and his works. Fox, in particular, as the only network not toadying up to BHO, might have concluded that it doesn't need to spend time attacking MSNBC.
But of course, The Cable Gamer will always say what she thinks. NWS and GE have their work, and TCG has her work.
