MSNBC removes Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from election coverage

I hate to say this, But I kind of knew this was coming, I just did not know when.

Via The New York Times:

MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.

That experiment appears to be over.

After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.

The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left.

“The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming,” said Davidson Goldin, formerly the editorial director of MSNBC and a co-founder of the reputation management firm DolceGoldin.

Executives at the channel’s parent company, NBC Universal, had high hopes for MSNBC’s coverage of the political conventions. Instead, the coverage frequently descended into on-air squabbles between the anchors, embarrassing some workers at NBC’s news division, and quite possibly alienating viewers. Although MSNBC nearly doubled its total audience compared with the 2004 conventions, its competitive position did not improve, as it remained in last place among the broadcast and cable news networks. In prime time, the channel averaged 2.2 million viewers during the Democratic convention and 1.7 million viewers during the Republican convention.

The success of the Fox News Channel in the past decade along with the growth of political blogs have convinced many media companies that provocative commentary attracts viewers and lures Web browsers more than straight news delivered dispassionately.

“In a rapidly changing media environment, this is the great philosophical debate,” Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, said in a telephone interview Saturday. Fighting the ratings game, he added, “the bottom line is that we’re experiencing incredible success.”

But as the past two weeks have shown, that success has a downside. When the vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin lamented media bias during her speech, attendees of the Republican convention loudly chanted “NBC.”

In interviews, 10 current and former staff members said that long-simmering tensions between MSNBC and NBC reached a boiling point during the conventions. “MSNBC is behaving like a heroin addict,” one senior staff member observed. “They’re living from fix to fix and swearing they’ll go into rehab the next week.”

You all most likely were thinking that I was going to terribly upset about this and was going to write a huge raging editorial about it. Well, guess again. I’m fully aware of Matthew’s and Olbermann’s editorial positions. Quite frankly, I am surprised that they even allowed Olbermann on there, during the election coverage. I mean, Chris is left of center, but Olbermann is obviously left wing all the way. I don’t think he’s far left, but far enough to make the Republicans feel uncomfortable with him. Which means he was really doing his job. The problem was, he was doing his job, when he was supposed to be neutral. I will admit, it is hard to choke back an opinion, especially when you’ve got some right wing gas bag, or shall I say, Republican gas bag, running a damn line, and you know he’s full of shit. It’s tough not to speak out.

The reason I like Keith Olbermann, as I said once before, I like Keith Olbermann because he gives a damn about our Constitution. Because it is quite obvious to this Libertarian-leaning, Paleo-Conservative, that Neo-Conservative Bush and Co. have totally trampled all over that damned Constitution. This is why I watched Keith’s show, not because I agreed with all of his Politics, but because I wanted to watch someone who wasn’t trying to kiss king George W. Bush’s ass on the air every night, like they do over on the Rupert Murdoch stooge network.

I’ll be straight and honest with you, I’m a Moderate Libertarian Conservative, but I totally find Joe Scarborough to be just an absolute asshole. I mean, I don’t know how the hell Mika Brzezinski does it. Scarborough is the perfect example of an damn male chauvinistic blowhard. The pay must be damn good for her to sit next to that guy and listen to his idiotic bullshit. This is why I do not watch the network in the mornings.

Anyhow, there’s my take on it.

The reactions are as expected, with the Republican Neo-Conservatives wetting themselves with glee, as usual and the left a bit ticked, but not all of them. and here they are: Hot Air, TalkLeft, Townhall.com, michellemalkin.com, Olbermann Watch, The WIZARD, fkap, First Draft, Little Green Footballs, Founding Bloggers, Liberal Values, The Confluence, Commentary, Patterico’s Pontifications, Dr. Melissa Clouthier, Ace of Spades HQ, TVNewser, NewsBusters.org, MyDD, The Sundries Shack, The Other McCain, The Campaign Spot, Oliver Willis, Macsmind, Wizbang, AMERICAblog News and The Strata-Sphere and more via Memeorandum

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