the NBC circus folds its tent

Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews are finally shoved aside by the NBC brass:

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. [e.a.]

So finally someone noticed that news and views don’t mix! That paying someone explicitly to provoke gets a TV network in hot water.

I’ve been hatin’ on Olbermann for a long time, ever since I read that he considers himself brave and courageous and that some people consider him knowledgeable. Here’s what I wrote in 2006:

I don’t know whom to loathe more—Olbermann or the “journalist” who is the author of this celebrity profile. He is oh-so-impressed that Olbermann throws around some WWII buzzwords:

Conservatives may hate his attacks, but no one doubts that he comes across as one of the smarter guys in the room. When he laid into then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Aug. 30, he threw in references to Neville Chamberlain and the policy of appeasement. Let’s see NBC network anchor Brian Williams pull that off.

A long time ago, I wrote on this blog that you’ll never hear me complaining about the dumbing-down of the culture:

You will rarely hear me complain about the dumbing-down of culture. All that worried talk about the sorry state of TV, the movies, music videos, video games, hip-hop, whatever. My position on this is: that’s not culture–that’s pop culture. And it’s supposed to be dumb, or dumb enough for a mass audience to get it

In principle, someone who calls her blog Infotainment Rules shouldn’t complain about the dumbing-down of the news, either. Yeah? You think? Well, I’m complaining. But it’s not the infotainment format and packaging that’s the problem. It’s the fucking ignorance of our “journalists”—from Olbermann, who seems to be riding high (I’m doubtful) to the sycophants who profile him—that’s got me down.

Meanwhile, it appears I was wrong. I predicted it would be curtains at MSNBC for Olbermann, who was so grotesquely partisan for the Democrats. Instead, the cable network rewarded him with a seat at the anchor desk on election night. That counts as a trend I’ll have to watch.

So: I was spectacularly wrong in predicting Olbermann’s imminent demise in 2006. And I would be an idiot to predict it now. I’m sure we’ll soon be hearing about how “dissent” is being “stifled” by NBC. That will be  Olbermann’s “argument,” and he’ll have many supporters, I’m sure. But he has been shoved aside—and not a moment too soon.

I’ll keep watching his career, though, and you should too—because he’s a bellwether of the trend toward open partisanship in the newsbiz. That trend will not diminish. It will grow. But probably not at NBC.