This year MSNBC canceled that useless tool Tucker Carlson, and they’ve given Rachel Maddow her own program. But Brian Stelter at the New York Times reports that MSNBC has taken two steps back.

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.

Just about everyone on any political cable program is “politically incendiary.” But if you’re a politically incendiary right-winger, you’re OK.

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.

I was watching MSNBC through both conventions. The real fireworks usually were between Pat Buchanan and Rachel Maddow. I assume from this that Olbermann and Matthews will still be present, just not anchoring.

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.

Again, the fact that most cable news presented little else but an unfiltered right-wing view for years was not controversial.

Rightie bloggers are doing a victory dance. Only their point of view is allowed on national media. Free speech? Ha.

Digby:

It was obviously also a result of the spitting and hissing between the two anchors during the coverage, but it’s pretty clear that NBC is taking some serious heat from the GOP and this is, after all, the house that Jack built. They’ll keep Matthews and Olberman on, of course, and they’ve added Maddow. But the word has gone forth and there will be adjustments, many of them small and nearly subconscious. They will hardly even know they’re doing it.