Current TV Ratings Drop 74% as Eliot Spitzer Debuts for Keith Olbermanns

Eliot Spitzer’s premiere on Current TV, where he is replacing Keith Olbermann, debuted to shockingly low ratings Friday night.

The former CNN host drew a total of 47,000 people in his 8pm time slot, only 10,000 of which were in the key 25-54 demographic.  To put that in perspective, it is down 74% from Olbermann’s nightly average in March, and roughly 1/10 of the viewership at MSNBC in the same time slot (and roughly 1/30 of Fox News).

Watch the show’s open featuring Spitzer, below:

Spitzer debuted amid a controversy between Current TV and Keith Olbermann that drew national coverage.  While the network claims that Olbermann breached his contract, missing work far too often and refusing to promote his show, Olbermann claims that the standards of the network were not sufficiently professional.

(Related — Details About Olbermann’s Firing Emerge: Complained Drivers ‘Smelled’ and ‘Talked to Him’)

The network’s decision to replace Olbermann with Spitzer, the former governor who resigned amid a prostitution scandal in 2008, has elicited a number of comments on Twitter:

‘@allaboutBMORE : An Inconvenient Truth’ – Eliot Spitzer stinks up the tube on debut’

‘@poniewozik: And with my post, the number of words written about Olbermann & Spitzer surpasses the viewership of either show’
‘@KateAurthur: When I think network savior, I think SPITZER. #golions #prideofHoraceMann’