Ellen Gray: Who won, who lost the election

YOU COULD say the presidential campaign's been very, very good to Keith Olbermann.

On Monday, MSNBC announced it had extended the "Countdown" host's contract for four more years, which should just about take him through President-elect Barack Obama's first term.

The new contract, according to one source quoted by the New York Times, is worth $7.5 million a year.

So, yes, getting worked up on television - and trying to get other people worked up, too - can pay off. Even for liberals.

But like the women of ABC's "The View," I've been wondering what Olbermann's going to be getting angry about once President Bush has left the building.

Last night, we had our answer: Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, who was back to being "The Worst Person in the World."

"The O'Reilly Factor" host is, of course, the default target for that particular "Countdown" feature, which regularly overlooks war criminals, serial killers and people who scream into cell phones in crowded theaters to take one more poke at the higher-rated competition.

And thanks to O'Reilly's own new four-year contract, I guess he'll continue to be available for "Worst Person" duty.

But does anyone really still care what these two guys think of each other?

I don't.

Olbermann, reduced last night to making fun yet again of O'Reilly's "war on Christmas" worries - hey, it's not even Thanksgiving yet - may look like a sure thing to MSNBC. But I feel an intervention coming on.

Or at the very least a reinvention.

If the NBC-owned cable network does have a winner, it's Rachel Maddow, who follows Olbermann at 9 p.m. and shares many of his views, while somehow managing to get through an entire hour of TV without releasing steam from her ears.

Other winners and losers in the Election That Ate Our TV Sets:

Winner: Fox News Channel, which, after years of being tied in the public mind to an increasingly unpopular president, will now be free to bring its "fair and balanced" scrutiny to a Democratic White House and Congress.

And if at times it's not being any more fair and balanced than MSNBC is in prime time, well, it will probably do even better, given the 46 percent of voters who cast their ballots for John McCain and may be no more happy with Obama than Olbermann and Maddow (and millions of others) have been with Bush.

Losers: News junkies of all political persuasions, who don't so much need to hear from people who agree with them - whether they're on Fox News, MSNBC or Comedy Central - as they do from people whose information goes beyond the sound bite of the day.

Winner: Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert, of "The Colbert Report," whose reactionary persona will finally have something solid to react to.

Loser: Colbert's "Daily Show" counterpart Jon Stewart, who's still trying to find the funny in the nation's first black president-elect. Here's hoping he can do it.

Winner: CBS News anchor Katie Couric, whose interview with Sarah Palin managed to catch the vice presidential candidate off guard (and off-message) while avoiding the kind of "Bush doctrine" questions that made ABC News' Charles Gibson appear more condescending than curious.

If you haven't seen "The CBS Evening News" in a while, Couric, who's been anchoring a solid and increasingly savvy newscast all year, deserves another look.

Loser: Larry King, who landed his Palin interview for tonight (9 p.m., CNN).

Winner: Palin, who continues to be in demand for interviews more than a week after an election she and her running mate lost. How many people still wanted to talk to John Edwards this week four years ago?

Winner: NBC's "Saturday Night Live," which after more than three decades on the air, was again the show everyone was talking about Monday morning, thanks to an election campaign people were actually paying attention to.

Loser: Ben Affleck, whose attempt to nail Olbermann on "SNL" the weekend before the election proved overly long and not nearly as funny as it should have been, considering the size of the target.

Winner: Tina Fey, who managed to transform the hype from her "SNL" impressions of Palin into a ratings boost for her Emmy-winning "30 Rock."

Though, OK, like Obama himself, she might have had a small assist from Oprah. *

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com.