Maddow to Light Your TV
The best news I've been met with upon waking up in a long-ass time. MSNBC is giving Rachel Maddow her own show!
Just in time for the closing rush of the presidential election, MSNBC is shaking up its prime-time programming lineup, removing the long-time host –- and one-time general manager of the network — Dan Abrams from his 9 p.m. program and replacing him with Rachel Maddow, who has emerged as a favored political commentator for the all-news cable channel.
And here she is talking with Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC's Countdown, about the news:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtVbgcy4Xvw&color1=11645361&color2=13619151&hl=en&fs=1]
The Times did a story a month ago hinting that she might soon have her own show, reporting that an MSNBC exec said she was "at the top of the list." Of course I can't watch it live from Australia, so I'll have to just continue watching video clips on the network's Web site. It will be enough.
Her commentary on Race for the White House is good. But she's often surrounded by people that are growing increasingly hard to watch. The host has been included in this bunch for quite some time now; he interrupts people so much and makes it frustrating to watch that I haven't been, well, watching.
But her radio show on Air America is awesome (listen to it), and I'm hoping, along with the rest of her gazillion fans, that her new show will be in a similar format to her radio show.
I subscribe to a couple of groups on Facebook, including Why Doesn't Rachel Maddow Have Her Own Show on MSNBC? and Rachel Maddow Fans, the latter of which is an offshoot of MaddowFans.com. It's clear the woman has a lot of support. I saw her for the first time in March when I was visiting the States and hanging out in Seattle. My first thought was, hey, another chick with a deep voice like me.
Shortly after that, I found her radio show, and I listen to it regularly via podcast. She's intelligent as hell, and by supplementing my news reading with her show, I consider myself to be pretty well-informed. She's exactly my age, and, well, she's a mentor.
