Whether because of their leftward tilt or on-air squabbles, MSNBC is taking away primetime election coverage from Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews:

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 backdrop to all this is that Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" is MSNBC's biggest (and only) hit show. This has put the MSNBC higher-ups in a bit of a bind of how to exploit Olbermann's audience, which is on the left, without infringing on its objective analysis. And its decision to keep him and Matthews as analysts probably didn't depend so much on what they think and sometimes say on air, as it was that they couldn't keep bickering with one another.