The Rachel Maddow Show premiered last night on MSNBC at 9pmET. Her first guest — the prior hour’s anchor, Keith Olbermann. Also on the show — her sometimes-foil on MSNBC political nights Pat Buchanan (for what looks to be a regular segment, “It’s Pat”). Here’s some reaction from around the web:
• TV Squad’s Allison Waldman, who describes the show as a Countdown “spin-off,” had high praise for Maddow. “Rachel Maddow is very smart — a Rhodes scholar — and you can hear that in her interviewing style. She packs a question with information,” she wrote. She also discussed the opening segment of the show, “Talk Me Down.” “It’s Rachel’s commentary/blog/editorial about a specific topic of note to her,” she writes. “It’s her show, so she gets to choose. She does her spiel, then invites a guest to ‘talk her down.'”
• Roger Catlin writes for the Hartford Courant that the “best part,” of the show featured Buchanan. “Together the two tangled enough on issues so that it allowed her to articulate her positions most cogently,” he writes. “When it was over, Maddow wasn’t mad or even riled up. She thanked Buchanan, whom she kept calling ‘my fake uncle.'” He also notes Maddow is, “not nearly as grating as Olbermann.”
• Megan Carpentier live-blogged the premiere for Jezebel, and had some critique for the end of the show. “Kent is a little annoying,” she writes of Kent Jones, who was the last guest, on to discuss pop culture. But she also noted a favorite line of the night from Maddow: “Unlike chocolate and peanut butter, church and state are not two great tastes that go great together.”
> Update: The premiere of Maddow’s show finished in 2nd place in cable news at 9pmET, beating CNN’s Larry King Live in both Total Viewers and the A25-54 demo (behind FNC’s Hannity & Colmes).
Click continued to see the first segment…