Olbermann's FOKNewsChannel to go live tonight

Late on Friday afternoon, former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann tweeted that his online "FOKNewsChannel" would begin operations tonight.

Around 3 PM EST, Olbermann posted, "Bulletin: FOKNewsChannel site, humble and presumably bug-ridden though it may be, goes live tonight. Puhhhhhhrobably. #FOK"

At just past 9 PM, a follow-up post announced, "Greetings, Earthlings: my website/blog FOKNewsChannel.Com will go live at 9:30 PM Eastern this evening."

As it happened, however, Olbermann's new blog site appeared a few minutes earlier than promised, with three sections -- an extended editorial on "Wisconsin and 'The Union,'" a section of "Snappy Answers to Stupid Headlines," and "Worst Persons of the Day."

In the first long piece, Olbermann reminisces about the job he held at "a strict union shop" when he was just out of college and how "the Wire Service Guild union was there when I really needed them and their pain-in-the-ass rules and the foremost of them was the boss couldn’t just fire somebody for being a pain-in-the-ass."

"Don't be expecting too much of my technical expertise here," Olbermann had cautioned in one tweet earlier in the day. "Remember, I started my career on manual typewriters."

Olbermann's new venture was first announced a month ago. As reported by Mediaite on January 29:

"These days, of course, Olbermann’s perhaps best known as the “The Proprietor” of a new Twitter-based news organization called the “FOK News Channel.' At least, he’s been billing himself that way since, well, yesterday. ... The sidelined star added a second Twitter account ahead of Tuesday’s State of the Union address, dubbing it 'FOKNewsChannel' and quickly attracting more than 18,000 followers (or 'Friends of Keith,' hence FOK). According to the account’s bio line, FOKNews can be described this way: 'Smokestacks Belching News On Twitter Since January 2011.'

"In a message to the account’s followers Tuesday evening, Olbermann wrote: 'Later after the Society of Irresponsible People meets and we decide how best to use this for deviltry and mayhem, look out.'"

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.