Why Did ESPN Cut 10 Minutes From A Podcast Of Keith Olbermann's Show?

Keith Olbermann made his much-anticipated return to ESPN this week, and if you've missed any episodes of his new show, audio podcasts can be found on the Worldwide Leader's website. But if you were to listen to the podcast from Wednesday's program, you'd notice that significant portions are missing. Those excised segments can be seen above.

In total, 10 minutes, 10 seconds from Wednesday's show do not appear on the podcast. This is what was cut over the course of the hour-long program:

• A joke about Johnny Manziel that runs from 2:46 to 2:51.

• The "Worst Persons In the World" bit, which takes aim at Piers Morgan and the Golf Channel for some stupid tweets. That section segues into a terrific personal story about Olbermann's father, Martin Luther King, and Satchel Paige that Olbermann made a point of promoting on Twitter. The entire segment appears from 29:06 to 35:10.

• A "Time Marches On" segment of oddball sports videos that runs from 48:35 to 52:40. It does make some sense that this got excised, since the videos can't be seen on the podcast anyway.

Oddly, Olbermann can be heard teasing the "Worst Persons In the World" several times on the Wednesday podcast, including right at the moment heading into a break just before it airs. This happens around the 23-minute mark. But the next thing podcast listeners hear is Olbermann introducing Peyton Manning.

The podcasts for Monday's, Tuesday's, and Thursday's shows all appear to be full-length, respectively running 50:06, 47:31, and 47:24, without commercial breaks. But Wednesday's podcast runs just 36:59.

We've emailed Olbermann and an ESPN spokesman to ask for an explanation. We'll let you know what we hear back.

Update (3:18 p.m.): Olbermann writes back:

The part that I have info on is the most important snippet. My father's story of seeing Satchel Paige pitching for the Black Yankees and looking back with shame that he never wondered why Paige wasn't with the other Yankees was posted separately as video, not just audio on the podcast. They pushed it pretty heavily around the net. As to the others, I surmise there were clearance issues with the audio from the video we could use on tv but not standing alone on the web.

Update (5:14 p.m.): Olbermann follows up with another email. What actually happened was completely inadvertent, and the situation has since been rectified:

The correct answer was none of the above. For one of the overnight reairs the tv show was edited down so it would end at the top of the hour. They needed to cut out a fixed amount of time and they did. Whoever created the podcast that night did it from that shortened show. It's now been replaced with the full show.

h/t to Nik D-K