Olbermann is pretty notorious for getting on people's nerves, and I don't mean politically, he has a pretty solid rep for being abrasive to those he works with. He's also managed to bring on most of the heat MSNBC has gotten the last two years and had negotiated a very expensive contract MSNBC couldn't really afford that was based on the understandable but mistaken post 2008 assumption that MSNBC's ratings would rise to parallel Fox and CNN, those ratings haven't materialized and they can't really afford his contract, his 2009 ratings were down over 50% from his 2008 ratings and his 2010 dropped more.

The morality of his actions and NBC's sudden ability to remember this previously unenforced policy are basically redundant, the matter is simply. He's got a contract that is overvalued and this made a legit excuse to terminate the contract, that's really the long and short of it. TV's all about ratings and his ratings were looking good and upward bound in 2008 but didn't pan out. I seriously dislike the man but I don't consider his actions particularly inappropriate, but a contract's a contract and odds are his protected him from being let go or paid less for sinking ratings so they found an alternate route.