While driving home from work one day in 2002, MSNBC president Erik Sorenson stumbled upon Michael Savage's show on WABC radio in New York. Sorenson, impressed that Savage had the fourth-largest talk-radio audience in America, considered luring him to MSNBC.

"When Sorenson read

[Michael Savage's ranting book] The Savage Nation, he was not troubled by it -- even though Savage referred to MSNBC as More Snotty Nonsense By Creeps. Savage also didn't like the channel's talent. In the bbok, he calls [anchor] Ashleigh Banfield 'the mind-slut with a big pair of glasses... She looks like she went from porno into reporting.' On MSNBC's Buchanan and Press, he was asked if he had apologized to Banfield. Savage said he wouldn't. When Banfield learned of the incident she cried. No matter. By March, Savage and his show would be on MSNBC."

[Savage was later fired (in July 2003) for remarking that a gay caller "should only get AIDS and die, you pig."]