Anchors Away!

The New York Times reports that the wannabe Woodward and Bernstein of cable TV have had their broadcasting license curtailed:

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.

Perceived? Here’s the New York Times on MSNBC a year ago:

Officials at MSNBC emphasize that they never set out to create a liberal version of Fox News.

“It happened naturally,” Phil Griffin, a senior vice president of NBC News who is the executive in charge of MSNBC, said Friday, referring specifically to the channel’s passion and point of view from 7 to 10 p.m.

Ed Morrissey adds, “NBC finally had enough during the conventions, according to the Times. The chant of ‘NBC, NBC‘ during the Republican convention didn’t help.”

Update: More from Ace and the Texas Rainmaker.