MSNBC Removes Chris Matthews And Keith Olbermann As Anchors

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After on-air arguments and loud complaints about Keith Olberman's anchor role at the Democratic and Republican conventions and to a lesser extent Chris Matthews coverage during the primaries where he would describe how inspired he was by Barack Obama and criticized Hillary Clinton, to the point of having to publicly apologize at one time, caused MSNBC and it's parent company NBC to remove both men as anchors and allow them to remain as analysts during political events.

The New York Times reports that according to a former editorial director of MSNBC, Davidson Goldin, "The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming."

In interviews with current and former staff members, it is said the tensions between MSNBC and NBC reached a "boiling point" during the conventions with one staff member saying, "MSNBC is behaving like a heroin addict. They’re living from fix to fix and swearing they’ll go into rehab the next week.”

In January, Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews, the host of “Hardball,” began co-anchoring primary night coverage, drawing an audience that enjoyed the pair’s “SportsCenter”-style show. While some critics argued that the assignment was akin to having the Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly anchor on election night — something that has never happened — MSNBC insisted that Mr. Olbermann knew the difference between news and commentary.

What the Times describes as a bold experiment of putting "politically incendiary hosts" in anchor chairs, is now over.

One of the on air incidents that the Washington Post lists as an example of embarrassing anchoring, on the part of Olbermann, is the one shown in the video above, where Keith Olbermann tells morning host Joe Scarborough to "get a shovel" when Scarborough was reporting about the McCain campaign.

Olbermann will still be hosting his "Countdown" show which has seen success and Matthews will still be hosting his "Hardball" show and both men will discuss political events as analysts, but their tenor as news anchors, is over for now.