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Keith Olbermann Shares Paul Harvey’s ‘Terrible, Dark, Evil Secret’

“Thus, Paul Harvey never took all the vacation time ABC owed him. Not even in year 58 of his tenure at the network.”

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During the Thursday version of his Countdown with Keith Olbermann podcast, Olbermann described in his “Things I Promised Not To Tell” segment the details of how he nearly became the successor to Paul Harvey at ABC Radio, and how he learned what Harvey viewed as his “terrible, dark, evil secret”.

“No one could mention this,” said Olbermann. “Nor the name of the other person involved. Nor the nature of the terrible thing that had happened on fear of absolute banishment from the world of Paul Harvey. The ABC executive who told me this story would not even tell it to me inside the ABC Radio news headquarters. We went and had coffee at a diner and he kept looking around to make sure nobody else was there from the network.”

Olbermann shared how ABC Radio executives liked the young newcaster so much they helped him move from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Chicago and would use him as a backup host.

“The guy that Paul Harvey backed up in the late 40s and early 50s was named H.R. Baukage. He called himself just Baukage on the air and he was already a star news reporter in this country when they invented radio. He had covered World War I for several newspapers. He had gone to work for ABC Radio’s predecessor, the NBC Blue Network, in 1932.”

In 1951, Baukage was ABC TV’s news anchor, and also did a daily 15-minute news roundup on ABC Radio. But when he went on a vacation in 1951, his role changed.

“They asked that kid from Chicago, Paul Harvey, to fill in for Baukage,” Olbermann shared. “Baukage was 62 and it was sure great that he had covered World War I but that was literally an entire World War before the one everyone was still talking about in 1951. ABC executives liked the young, brash, dramatic Paul Harvey and so when Baukage came back, they fired him. They gave Paul Harvey Baukage’s show. But you weren’t allowed to know that. It’s not on the web, except in a transcript o the obit I did when Paul Harvey died.

Olbermann then stated another secret: He updates Paul Harvey’s Wikipedia page “every couple years” to share that Harvey took over for H.R. Baukage, and waits to see how long it takes someone else to remove it. He then went on to share how Harvey feared the same situation might happen to him someday.

“This was Paul Harvey’s terrible, dark, evil secret. His big break was the guy he was filling in for got fired. I don’t think — having studied this as best I could — that Paul Harvey got H.R. Baukage fired. Nor did my boss at ABC think that. But over 50 years, Paul Harvey began to believe, not only that he got H.R. Baukage fired, but that some day God would avenge poor Baukage, and on that one day, Paul Harvey would get fired and be replaced by some guy who filled in for him while he was on vacation.

“Thus, Paul Harvey never took all the vacation time ABC owed him. Not even in year 58 of his tenure at the network. And he got up at 3:30 every morning to get to the studio or 1:30 when he was broadcasting from his other home in Arizona because he was convinced ABC would someday ‘Baukage’ him.”

Olbermann then detailed how the same ABC executive who told him Harvey’s fear of the Baukage story getting out told him they needed to plan for an eventual replacement for the venerable newsman. It centered around Olbermann beginning a Sunday format similar to Harvey’s, as someone familiar to Harvey’s listeners would be the easiest way to replace the legend…until someone mentioned the plan to Harvey.

“‘This what will now happen,” Olbermann said as he imitated Harvey. “‘You will fly to Chicago tomorrow with a new contract for me, Paul Harvey. This contract will be for the same terms and length as the current one but it will include one paragraph spelling out that Keith Olbermann will never again appear on Paul Harvey News and Comment. And another paragraph stating there will never be a seventh day of Paul Harvey News and Comment with or without Paul Harvey or I resign’.

“Paul knew in his heart the time had come. Paul Harvey’s Paul Harvey was at the door. So, he had to kill him.”

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News Audio

Erick Erickson: Despite Big Numbers, No One Outside of Twitter is Talking About Tucker Carlson

“No one off Twitter is talking about the content at all.”

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(Photo: 95.5 WSB)

Tucker Carlson debuted his video show on Twitter earlier this week to much fanfare. Erick Erickson believes you can be fooled by the reach displayed in the first installment.

Many conservative pundits pointed to analytics to prove that Carlson’s show on the social media app will actually have a bigger presence than it did while being broadcast on Fox News.

However, Erickson argued in a tweet that any mention of Carlson outside of the social media platform is largely non-existent.

“The Tucker Carlson problem in a nutshell: I see many people on Twitter talking about how many views his video got, but no one on or off Twitter is talking about what he said in those ten minutes,” Erickson said. “No one off Twitter is talking about the content at all. Few on Twitter are either.”

According to public information available on Twitter, Carlson’s debut 10-minute episode — which Fox News contends breached his contract — has been viewed 106 million times as of this publication.

In the wake of Carlson’s large debut episode, a Twitter user has gone viral for claiming that they created a locked account with 0 followers, and will still have their tweets listed as receiving views, which should be impossible. The argument follows that Twitter is instead using impressions — rather than views — as the public metric displayed on individual tweets.

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Bob Sirott Celebrates 50th Anniversary of Radio Debut

“My early radio career allowed me to adapt to television.”

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June 8th, 1973. That’s the day Chicago media legend Bob Sirott got his start on WLS-AM.

In a tweet, the WGN Radio morning host shared a picture of his time at what was then The Big 89, and shared that it was the 50th anniversary of his debut on the Chicago station.

Sirott originally began his radio career on WBBM-FM in 1971 as a fill-in DJ before moving to WLS in 1973. He worked there until 1979 before joining WBBM-TV. In 1989, he shifted to a role at WMAQ-TV, before ultimately returning to radio in 2019.

“Radio is a lot more creative than television,” Sirott told Barrett News Media earlier this year. “It’s harder. My early radio career allowed me to adapt to television. It goes the other way, too. I think the television work has made me better at the radio the second time around.”

He replaced Steve Cochran as the morning host on WGN Radio. The 73-year-old saw his contract extended in 2021 to remain with the station.

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Mandy Connell Off Show For A Month After Vocal Cord Surgery

Connell also revealed that Dr. Opperman had previously repaired a similar injury to her KOA colleague Ross Kaminsky.

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850 KOA midday host Mandy Connell will be out of work for a month after recovering from surgery to repair her vocal cords Thursday.

Connell revealed her absence on Wednesday.

“Tomorrow morning, I will be having surgery on my vocal cords, and if you’ve never been to the blog before, and you want to see my actual vocal cords today’s the day because I have a photograph of my vocal cords on the blog today so you can clearly see what it is that my crack surgeon is going to be removing tomorrow,” Connell shared.

She then welcomed her surgeon, Dr. David Opperman, to the program to explain what exactly she’ll be undergoing. Connell also revealed that Dr. Opperman had previously repaired a similar injury to her KOA colleague Ross Kaminsky.

“We have to address the fact that you have sort of a little bump on your vocal cord that’s interfering with the way it vibrates,” Dr. Opperman revealed. “And that’s why you don’t sound like you used to a few years ago. It’s basically interfering with the sound production in your throat. So we’re going to put you to sleep very comfortably, use a little device that lets me look directly at your vocal cords, and then under a very high-powered magnification, we’re going to remove that spot.

“We actually have to lift up some of the tissue so that we can remove it without injuring the vibration surface. And that will preserve your voice and you’ll come back talking like you did five years ago.”

The doctor went on to tell Connell that her condition was likely caused by talking on-air for more than 20 hours per week in “different pitch ranges and intonations”.

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