Olbermann counts down to his premiere on 'Current'

NEW YORK — Keith Olbermann is showing off his office to a visitor.

His office is in the cozy production and editorial headquarters from where, starting June 20, he will originate "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" on Current TV every weeknight. He and his team had taken residence just days earlier at the still-under-renovation building, which, situated on Manhattan's West 33rd Street, Olbermann has dubbed Studio 33.

The set for his show hasn't been delivered yet. But he has just finished taping his first "Worst Persons" Web video (today's winner — ta-da! — Sarah Palin) in the newsroom.

His office is bare. Its lone amenity so far is a desk chair he used to have at MSNBC, a chair he says once belonged to Brian Williams that he somehow kept after exiting in January. But on the newly refinished hardwood floor, a dotted outline of Post-its clearly indicates where his desk will go.

Olbermann has similarly vivid outlines in mind for how "Countdown" will fit into his new Current TV home. As he is quick to point out, "Countdown" is only the opening act.

"The idea that it's just me coming over and putting a show on in the middle of this network is correct," he says, "but temporary."

As a more enduring plan, Olbermann, 52, has empire-building in mind. He's got Current's prime-time landscape, not just a nightly hour, in his sights.

Hobbling with the aid of a retractable cane (he is nursing a stress fracture in his left foot), he leads the way to another office already equipped with two chairs, and lowers his 6-foot-3-inch frame into one of them.

He explains that "Countdown" will be much the same show it became at MSNBC during its eight-year evolution.

"Countdown" was a smart, progressive refuge and a reliable rebuke to rival Fox News Channel pundits where Olbermann would chronicle the day's events, interview guests, deliver blistering commentaries in filigreed prose, needle hand-picked scoundrels (as in his Worst Persons fixture), and wrap the whole package with literate trappings and pop-culture wit (his readings from James Thurber short stories were a regular feature).

It was the most popular show on MSNBC, averaging more than a million viewers, and it served as the prime-time template for a left-leaning lineup at a network that, until "Countdown," had been plagued by an identity crisis.