When you have media literacy, you understand how a story about a feud between two motivated but minor entertainers like Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly could possibly wind up on the front page of The New York Times.
There are three reasons, actually. The first is the second law of media, which we talked about just last week: the media is an exercise in the power of small numbers. It doesn't take all that many sets of eyeballs to make a person a media celebrity. Olbermann hosts a weekday talk show on MSNBC, mostly political, called "Countdown." It has a viewership of about one million, which is 1/304 millionth of the national population. O'Reilly hosts "The O'Reilly Factor," a weekday talk show on Fox, mostly political, that has a viewership of about three million, which is 3/304 millionth of the national population.
It means that while these shows are on, 300 million Americans are doing something else, which brings into focus the media's third law: the most misused word in the media-public relationship is the word "we." When you hear a media pundit say, "What are we to make of the Olbermann-O'Reilly feud," you know the pundit is badly misusing the word "we."
Yet the second law bestows enough power into their minuscule percentages to provide Olbermann and O'Reilly the kind of fame that gets them coverage on page one of The New York Times. And it is legitimate power, measurable in revenue. If these same two guys were local hosts, duking it out for ratings superiority in metropolitan Rapid City, nobody outside of western South Dakota would know their names.
The second reason for the story is the "conflict" media value. Olbermann and O'Reilly have maintained a long-running feud, based on their social and political views., and recently the feud, in the view of the only two people who really matter – the ones with the money – started to get too far out of hand. The personal conflict is long-standing. Olbermann's viewers – and I am one, occasionally – commonly tune in to hear Olbermann call O'Reilly "Bill-o the Clown." O'Reilly's viewers – and I could not bear to watch O'Reilly even if I agreed with him – tuned in to hear O'Reilly call Olbermann a "vicious smear merchant."
Though it was entertaining, the personal conflict lacked the strength, as a media value, to merit the attention of the Times. Then corporate chieftains – General Electric behind Olbermann, the News Corporation behind O'Reilly – became involved, providing strength aplenty, in the minds of Times editors, for the conflict value. A reporter was dispatched. Olbermann was reported saying, "The goal here is to get this blindly irresponsible man and his ilk off the air.” But that would mean Fox losing a tidy revenue center. In turn, O'Reilly said on the air, "Federal authorities have developed information about General Electric doing business with Iran, deadly business." This is not the kind of allegation G.E. would love to deal with, no matter the source.
That was enough, the Times reported, for Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. and for G.E. chairman Jeffrey Immelt. In a bit of fascinating negotiating (you really should read the story), overseen by the remarkably (comparatively) level-headed talk show host Charlie Rose of PBS, the two corporate bosses set up a deal, which provided the story its third strong media value, novelty. "Even though the feud had increased the audience of both programs," reported the Times, a "cease-fire" was arranged. It is a cold day in hell when you find corporate media ownership pulling the plug on anything that increases audiences. But then, as a source told the Times: "“They’ve won their respective constituencies. They don’t need to do this anymore, really.”
Which brings this story full-circle, back to the second law of media.
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