Who could have guessed that Karl Rove would be Fox News' Howard Beale? "Turn the machines back on" is not exactly "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore", but it's true enough that, like Beale, Rove "ran out of bullshit" to say on air.

He also may have sparked a programming shift at his network – though it appears to have started with him getting less airtime, not (like Beale) more.

Fox News' president, Roger Ailes, decreed last week that producers cannot book Rove, along with amateur podiatrist and professional irritant Dick Morris, for their shows without prior permission from upper management. This should dilute their presence on the network: programming chief Bill Shine said it was because "the election's over", but it's difficult not to make the connection between Rove and Morris having made the wrongest of a series of wrong predictions from Fox contributors.

In the run-up to the election, almost all Fox's on-air talent participated in the fantasy that the polls were skewed and the country was on the verge of rebellion against the communist Kenyan who worshiped Allah in the White House – but Morris and Rove described especially vivid fever dreams. Morris predicted that Obama would lose by an almost-mathematically impossible landslide; Rove, on election night, unspooled a Romney-wins-Ohio narrative so ridiculous it had to be challenged on air. This from a network that still promulgates the existence of massive Democratic voter fraud and denies global warming.

But before we begin to calibrate the moment Fox brings Keith Olbermann out of retirement, let's remember that Rove hasn't actually begun his. He is still a highly-paid contributor, and the whole "ask permission" situation isn't a ban – though it has been widely characterized as such by gleeful liberal commentators.

You know what we call doing less work for the same money around my house? A promotion.

And the election is over. It may be easier on the psyches and egos of Fox viewers to pretend it never happened than to grapple with the meaning of the loss. This seems to be the strategy of the congressional Republicans. The wane of Rove and Morris isn't Fox News accepting an ugly truth; it's an attempt to ignore it. In other words, this is not a new tactic for them at all, but rather standard operating procedure.

If Fox is really overhauling, there's a lot more work to do. Other personalities went on Fox-led funhouse tours of the election, too. Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, Michael Barone, Byron York, Steve Hayes – you'd be hard-pressed to find a Fox contributor who passed on the Kool-Aid. For heaven's sake, they're still putting Sarah Palin on the air – herself a living testament to the network's utter disregard for both truth and consequences.

And why truck with reality? Conservative fantasy has been extremely profitable and popular for Fox; the only hard facts that matter to Ailes are sales figures. His reported overture to General David Petraeus to run for president underscores the primacy of ratings over principle. Whatever his role in a "war on terror" that Republicans could love, Petraeus' political leanings are themselves a black box, as unknowable as his private life is known. If only he'd kept his passions as in check as his policy pronouncements.

As it stands, suggesting that Rove and Morris play smaller roles on air has generated lots of publicity and costs nothing in terms of credibility with their audience… which has sat through one "course correction" already. Last spring, reporters were convinced that Fox was on the verge of a "move to the middle" and was "alienating conservative true believers as it inched toward the center".

That center did not hold. The rough beast continued to slouch rightward.

If I hold out any hope that Fox News will change, it's not based on the shuffle of marquee names. It would stem from moments such as one I saw earlier this week. During an interview with failed Republican contender Rick Perry (still on the air!), a daytime anchor casually mentioned a fact she had come upon as she "was reading in the New Yorker magazine". Only a few minutes later, her male counterpart led off a question with the observation: "I get an earful in my house filled with women that Republicans are losing social issues – immigration, women's rights, gay rights and so forth."

The acknowledgement of the New Yorker as a trusted resource is a minor miracle on its own. And the presentation of facts acquired by talking to non-approved flacks and pundits? That's dangerously close to reporting.

If any change happens at Fox, it will likely start as it will have to with the GOP: from the bottom, based on what's really happening in people's lives, and through conversation – not decree.