Olbermann, the only other person who can hold a candle to Bill O’reilly, has been benched from election coverage on MSNBC (along with Matthews)
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.
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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.”
It was great to watch while it lasted. Everybody knows that MSNBC is way left, and Fix news is way right.
I’d bet the ratings on msnbc’s coverage goes right into the toilet. David Gregory is the MSNBC version of Charlie Gibson, it will surely be a yawner of a program.
People tune to MSNBC now b/c thanks to olbermann taking a stance to the left it’s become the “left-leaning” cable news. CNN bounces wildly from left to center to right, Fox is in the republicans pocket.
Most politicos I talk to undersand the cable news to be broken down this way
FOX = Very right/conservative slanted
CNN = Varies depending on public opinion polls and what show you’re watching
MSNBC = Left leaning, but up until 05/06 very centered depending on the show you were watching
Matthews is going more left lately b/c he’s going to run for Senate in a year as a Dem so he gets to build his base now. Olbermann has been the only champion of the left on a major network
MSNBC is moving to the left, as you can see by their choice to give Rachel Maddow (who has a show on Air America) her own nightly show. The movement left began when Dan Abrams started running programming a few years ago.