Olbermann to Return to TV, Anchoring Postseason Baseball

Keith Olbermann â€" the sports anchor, not the political news one â€" is returning to television.

Keith Olbermann will host coverage of the baseball playoffs for Turner Sports in the fall.

Turner Sports announced on Wednesday that it had reached a deal with Mr. Olbermann to host its studio coverage of postseason Major League Baseball in the fall.

That means Mr. Olbermann will be on the air for the Turner channel TBS for much of October. TBS has the rights to the two wild-card playoff games in each league, and all four of the division series, as well as the National League Championship Series. (The World Series will again be broadcast on the Fox network.)

The news was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

Mr. Olbermann has a long background in sports, including a recent stint on NBC as a host of its studio introduction to “Sunday Night Football.” It was his work as an anchor on ESPN’s “SportsCenter” in the 1990s that introduced him to many television viewers.

But he became best known for his tenure as the host of the MSNBC program “Countdown,” which at one point was the highest-rated cable news show not on the Fox News Channel. His eight-year run at that network ended in acrimony, as have many of Mr. Olbermann’s previous assignments on television. Most recently, he was the main anchor for the Current TV network, which fired him only a year after he had joined. Both sides sued, and in March they came to a settlement whose terms were not disclosed.

Mr. Olbermann has retained a deep interest in sports, especially baseball. He was a longtime fan of the Yankees, though he recently declared on Twitter that he no longer roots for the team.