Who's Shouting Now!

The opinionated Fox News Channel is giving ground to increasingly noisy competitors

Ever since Fox News Channel, founded in 1996, proved that news delivered with attitude, opinion and even belligerence could wipe the clock of just about any competitor, CNN - once the undisputed leader of the cable news pack - and a handful of smaller channels have been struggling to find a formula that brings in the same kind of numbers.

Now, CNN and the others appear to have found an answer. Virtually all the competitors are slashing at the Fox ratings lead by offering their own versions of noisy and opinionated news. CNN has been closing on Fox and the others, including MSNBC and CNBC, have on occasion closed on CNN. They're all doing it by delivering the news with a strong personal flair.

The most salient examples of the trend are Headline News's Glenn Beck, who is showing the fastest-rising ratings of anyone on cable news; Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's pugnacious but cerebral resident lefty; his colleague Chris Matthews, long an opponent of the Iraq war who was recently off the air because of illness but who remains very much in the mix; Nancy Grace, whose acerbic, finger-wagging style on Headline News is aimed primarily at miscreants and their lawyers; and, on CNBC, the manic money maven Jim Cramer, whose flailing arms and booming delivery is sheer entertainment for stock-market players who don't mind being shouted at.

The shift toward all-opinion, all-the-time is also working on CNN for Lou Dobbs, who never tires of pushing protectionist views that have won him fans as well as critics. The somewhat stodgy Dobbs unabashedly labels his show "news, debate and opinion."

The shakeout among the main cable news networks is all the more notable for the audience losses at Fox News Channel, which has suffered a 21 percent decline in total viewers when compared to the fourth quarter of 2005. Its biggest star, Bill O'Reilly, virtually invincible for much of the Bush administration's tenure, has also lost a significant number of viewers in the past year as the administration's fortunes have waned, its Iraq policy in shambles and its midterm electoral defeats conclusive.

Overall, though, O'Reilly remains the king of cable, ahead of CNN's Larry King and the target of almost relentless invective from MSNBC's Olbermann, who cheerfully describes O'Reilly as "the worst person in the world."

O'Reilly, quick to take offense from any challenge to his bedrock conservative views, is equally dismissive of Olbermann. Watching the two go after each other is a spectator sport.