In June 2011 Marisa Guthrie landed Keith Olbermann’s first sit-down interview about his MSNBC exit and his move to Current TV. The Hollywood Reporter cover story disclosed the contract terms: $10 million a year, plus equity in the network that could be worth as much as $100 million.
Then
Olbermann had left MSNBC abruptly in January 2011 — the move was telegraphed by network turbulence and never fully reconciled — and signed with Current TV soon after, joining the Al Gore-co-founded cable channel that was looking to reposition itself with prime-time political programming. The THR interview was his first detailed conversation about the transition.
Guthrie’s reporting laid out the structure of the deal: $10 million annual salary, up from the roughly $7 million he had been making at MSNBC, plus an equity stake in Current that could realize $100 million if the network sold or appreciated. Olbermann had also brought in former MSNBC colleague David Shuster — whom MSNBC had suspended for taping a CNN pilot — as his substitute anchor. Matt Taibbi, Michael Moore, and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas were named as paid contributors to the new show.
The original FishbowlLA framing treated the cover as the kind of exclusive a print-trade interview cycle still made possible in 2011 — a major TV figure granting first-interview access to a single magazine — even as the broader trade-press landscape was shifting toward digital scoop journalism.
Now
The Current TV bet did not pay off in the way the equity numbers suggested it might. Current sold to Al Jazeera in January 2013 for around $500 million, and Olbermann’s reported equity stake — if it converted at the deal’s effective price — generated a substantial windfall, with subsequent reporting estimating the realized number in the $50 million range rather than the $100 million ceiling. Olbermann left Current in early 2012 after a contentious public dispute with the network leadership — about half a year into the $10 million-per-year contract — and the network filed a lawsuit, which eventually settled out of court.
Olbermann’s career since has cycled through ESPN, a return to MSNBC, a long YouTube and podcast era, and recurring back-and-forths on social platforms. He has remained a politically active commentator without a stable cable home for most of the years since Current ended. David Shuster has continued in cable-news, streaming-news, and independent-media projects, including roles at Al Jazeera America and at independent political news properties. Marisa Guthrie has continued at THR for much of the interval and remains one of the trade’s senior television reporters.
The 2011 Current TV deal looks now like a peak example of an era when cable executives believed they could buy political-personality talent at unlimited prices and capture the engaged-audience future — exactly the bet that Comcast had made on MSNBC and that Spectrum and DirecTV’s negotiated carriage made possible.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine: June 2011 snapshot