Rosie says she won’t host show on MSNBC

NEW YORK - Rosie O’Donnell won't be coming to MSNBC after all, according to a post on her blog.

The acid-tongued talk-show host whose dispute with Elisabeth Hasselbeck hastened her departure from “The View” was reportedly in negotiations to host a prime-time talk show on MSNBC five days a week. However, she wrote on her blog Wednesday that “my career as a pundit is over b4 it began.”

“We were close to a deal,” O'Donnell said. “Almost done ... i let it slip in miami causing panic on the studio end.”

The cable news channel owned by NBC Universal would not officially comment on the report but a source close to MSNBC TV confirmed O'Donnell's report.

The reports that O'Donnell would return to TV, which first surfaced in The New York Times, suggested she would take over the 9 p.m. slot currently occupied by “Live with Dan Abrams.” That would put her show in competition with CNN’s “Larry King Live” and Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes.”

Slide show   Rosie through the years From the ‘80s through ‘The View,’ a look at the feisty TV host’s career Photos

Fox News dominates prime-time ratings for cable news channels, averaging 1.5 million viewers this year, according to Nielsen data. MSNBC is third with 505,000, behind CNN’s 755,000.

O’Donnell hosted her own daytime talk show from 1996 to 2002. She also produced a Broadway musical and founded a short-lived namesake magazine before her tempestuous run on “The View.” Although she was there for less than a year before leaving in May, her boisterous, opinionated style was credited with boosting the show’s ratings.

Shortly before joining the multi-host show created by Barbara Walters, O’Donnell had blogged that “it will be hard 4 me 2 not b the boss.” Now she’s set to reclaim center stage as her own.

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