so maybe it's not a coincidence that keith olbermann, former "sportscenter" anchor returns to espn thisor that nate silver, the stat stud is about to bring his 538 blog to the network. earlier i spoke with espn president john skipper about fox's new network and the state of sports journalism. john skipper, thanks for joining us. >> thank you, brian. thanks for having me. >> we see the earnings from disney come out a few days ago and as always, espn drives the company's profits. it must be a great time to be in sports media, huh? >> look, right now is an ascendant time for sports. we were very pleased with the earnings. many divisions of the walt disney company have contributed this year. the films are having a great year, the parks are having a great year and we're pleased to do our part in the overall company. >> because of those profits, the competition is getting more and more fierce. we have fox sports 1 launching in a matter of days. what's espn's take on this giant new rival? >> look, we have a great deal of respect for the news corporation and for fox. they have got some excellen

at the time keith olbermann and bill o'reilly were in a feud. keith olbermann had me on his show. so i got a lot more exposure when for that. the residuals lasted for a couple of years. people would say, oh, i remember you. i saw you on bill o'reilly's show. it has died down but it started a conversation about whether this sort of ambush journalism was acceptable. >> what was the lesson for you out of this? i think msnbc did seven different shows on this. >> a few. >> bill o'reilly and keith olbermann were calling names in the whole process. is that good for journalism? people watch it? >> people watch it. whether -- from my perspective, is it good for journalism? i don't think it's good if you don't like somebody what they write that you track them down without any warning. again, it's not like i had been ignoring their calls. they never contacted me for comment. they never contacted me to ask me on their show. they knew how to get in touch with me because they had other center for american progress on the o'reilly factor. but to simply -- wasn't journalism. they weren't trying t

at the time, keith olbermann and bill o'reilly were in a few. keith oberman had me on his show . so i got a lot of exposure from that. the residual lasted for a couple of years were people say, oh, i remember you. i saw you on bill o'reilly show. i think that has died down but it did start a conversation whether this kind of ambush journalism was acceptable. >> what is a lesson for you about all this? i think there have been seven different shows on this or seven different pieces. and bill o'reilly and keith oberman were calling each other names during the whole process. people watch it. >> yes, people watch it. from my perspective, is a good for journalism? i don't think it's a good when you don't like someone, what they write, that you go track them down without any warning to its not like i had been ignoring their calls. they never contacted me for, and. they never contact me to be on the show. -- they never contacted me for comment. they never contacted me to be on the show. it wasn't journalism. they want tried to get a real response from a. they were trying to -- from me. t

turned out to be a great opportunity to work with the same staff that did excellent shows for keith olbermann and governor spitter. for the past eight months, the staff has conducted an experiment with topics here and tone and bookings and we've turned it into something very unique. very few tv news discussions shows can go from funny to serious on a dime. that's what we went for with newsmakers fill the first half and is a tearists the second. tonight's f bomb is a bit different. it is four reasons why "viewpoint" is better than most news shows you can actually see. number one, our guest bookings. i knew coming into with the all politics format on an off-election year, we went for more current events. media, religion, entertainment, science, sports, music, social media, pop, tech, health and nutrition, viral video, even reality tv. we were very proud to have a dynamic guest list. people like bill bradley, spike lee, michael moore, robert reich, we once had catholic league president phil donahue and phil dan hue on the same show. all female panels that focused on the economy. all african-amer

keith olbermann hadn't started commentary. "huffington post" didn't exist. god, it was just a wall of conservative fear, hatred, et cetera. so any voice that rose up in opposition to that, i found so welcome, including current for however long that it lasted. it made a difference. look at the alumni of air america now. senator al franken, rachel maddow, thom hartmann, myself and the list goes on and on. one day, we'll look back at the alumni of current and go oh, my god, look at that all-star cast. and what an amazing moment they had in history there. and i think we did a great job with it. i don't worry about it at all. >> john: guys, before we go to break, one last question from each of you. al jazeera america is trying to take a straight news approach with no bias. is that the wave of the future or is blue state/red state commentary going to outshout it? bill? >> bill: i think the people are looking for opinion today. educated, informed, entertaining, opinion. i think they're looking for opinion. i think there are plenty of straight news opportunities out

. >> bill: it started when they hired keith olbermann. >> it was filled with documentaries and thingse that and more recently, they put on real personalities and knew what they were talking about. >> bill: for your chapter on current tv, you could have a picture of this bumper sticker, team olbermann. on current. all right. we will continue to -- we'll continue to make news mckenzie. you continue to cover it at politico. >> thanks a lot. >> bill: thanks for coming in. >> announcer: this is the "bill press show." honest. they know that i'm not bsing them for some hidden agenda, actually supporting one party or the other. when the democrats are wrong, they know i'm going to be the first one to call them out. cenk on air>> what's unacceptable is how washington continues to screw the middle class over. cenk off air>>> i don't want the middle class taking the brunt of the spending cuts and all the different programs that wind up hurting the middle class. cenk on air>>> you got to go to the local level, the state level and we have to fight hard to make sure they can't buy our politics anymo

keith olbermann and piers morgan. donald trump and rosie o'donnell. don lemon and jonah hill. coulter and john franklin stevens. a couple notes on that, mr. schwarzenegger said to twitter he was on a plane, this what is he said to palin, looking everywhere but can't see russia from here. palin came back with a retort that wasn't that great, she said arnold should have landed i could have explained our multibillion surplus in energy efforts. what's he up to. i thought the keith olbermann and piers morgan was fun. >> i did see that. >> and ann coulter and john franklin stevens, didn't know what that was, she made comments, he stepped up. you can look at twitter forever and watch these go through. >> pulling back from it. i feel like i'm getting too addicted to it. and then it's like, you know, sometimes you do stuff or have an interview that doesn't -- people don't take to or whatever, and -- >> twitter is a dangerous place. >> have you noticed sometimes, you know, you look at people's profiles, right, just to see like -- people write the nastiest stuff and when you look at thei