Crazy like a Fox: With in-your-face personalities and politics, Fox News Channel is beating CNN

''They missed the course in college that said socialism failed,'' Ailes says of Fox's competitors. ``They all believed the same things, and they reinforced their views by going to Upper East Side cocktail parties where they heard Dan thinks this and Tina thinks that all the time.''

Don't look now, but ''the world's news leader,'' as CNN likes to brag about itself, is no longer America's news leader. Those brash, mouthy, skinkickers over at Fox News Channel are winning the ratings war and winning it decisively.

Born barely five years ago to open jeering from the television industry -- Fox News actually had to pay cable systems to carry its programming -- Rupert Murdoch's fledgling news operation has jumped to the top of the cable news world, even though CNN has double the staff and a much larger budget.

Any way you add them up, the quarterly Nielsen ratings released this month show Fox News ahead:

o Fox averages 666,000 viewers a day to CNN's 546,000. Fox also beats CNN in prime time and in the 25-54 age group broadcasters covet. Four of the top five cable news shows are on Fox.

o Fox's populist foghorn Bill O'Reilly is clobbering venerable CNN interviewer Larry King, 2.1 million viewers to 1.3 million.

o The rowdy young crew on Fox and Friends, the network's morning newscast, has an audience 30 percent bigger than that of Paula Zahn, hired away from Fox by CNN with much fanfare -- not to mention $2 million a year -- in September.

o Nighttime host Greta Van Susteren, who bolted CNN for Fox in January, is already beating the Atlanta network's acclaimed veteran Aaron Brown at 10 p.m. with her news-talk program.

o During President Bush's January State of the Union Message, Fox had a bigger audience than CNN and MSNBC -- the weak-sister third cable news channel -- combined.

The dimensions of Fox's victory are all the more impressive because CNN -- which had a 15-year head start -- is actually available in nine million more homes.

''Within our universe, we're annihilating the competition,'' gloats Shepard Smith, Fox's afternoon anchor.

Let's keep that universe in perspective. The big three broadcast networks pull in a combined 30 million viewers for their evening newscasts, about 27 times the audiences of Fox and CNN put together.

Still, it's a very impressive performance by a news network that CNN founder Ted Turner once threatened to ''squash like a bug.'' Turner has little to do with CNN these days, but his old colleagues talk only slightly less tough a line.

''Aside from breaking more news, getting better guests and enjoying a significantly better reputation with the American people and around the world, CNN has more than than twice the bureaus, three times the journalists, four times the ad revenue and 40 times the number of prestigious journalism awards,'' CNN spokeswoman Edna Johnson says, declining to discuss Fox further.

That makes Roger Ailes, president and CEO of Fox News, cackle with vengeful glee.

''First they spun that we were too conservative,'' he says. ``Then, that we weren't doing news, just opinion. Now they're getting their a-- kicked in all those areas, so I guess they'll come out and whisper that we have some bad disease. That's about all they have left . . .

``CNN has more money, a bigger bench with more people, more of everything except maybe more determination and, of course, more viewers. We're grittier, smaller, faster -- we're not old, fat and tired.''

Fox News ratings have been steadily rising from the very beginning, but two big jumps in the past 18 months -- one during the Florida recount in 2000, the other last year following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- were what carried them past CNN.

The most difficult part of the battle with CNN, says Fox anchor Brit Hume, was getting the network onto enough cable systems. ''It was the lack of availability that was limiting how much we could grow,'' Hume says. ``Once that was taken care of, what we needed was a story to get people tuning in who didn't necessarily watch or like 24-hour news channels . . . When we had the two big stories, people sampled the product and decided to stay.''

That product is a cheeky approach to the news that is deliberately positioned to the right of CNN and the three broadcast networks. Critics say Fox News has a right-wing bias; Fox News retorts that it's merely lacking the left-wing bias that's been ingrained in the rest of television news for decades.

Critics dismiss Ailes' view as the raving of an old right-winger, citing his 22 years as a consultant to Republican politicians, notably Ronald Reagan. ''It is these two sensibilities above all -- right-wing talk radio and below-the-belt political campaigning -- that Ailes brought with him to Fox, and his stamp is evident in all aspects of the network's programming,'' said the lefty press watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting in a report on the network last year. (Though no one seemed to think he was a conservative crank when he took over CNBC in 1993 and built it into the top business-news operation in America, tripling ratings driving profits from $9 million a year to more than $100 million.)

But Hume, an award-winning veteran of more than two decades at ABC, sees it much the same way. ''Viewers have noticed the bias in journalism for a long time,'' he says. ``I always noticed it. . . . Fairness is a skill that must be developed and practiced with rigor. I think it's been a huge factor in our success; it may well be the most important factor.''

Whether Fox's philosophy is fairness or a bias of its own, it certainly shows up in the news programming. Stories about big government wasting money or pushing around citizens are far more common on Fox than other networks.

Example: For months, Fox has been hammering away at a story in Klamath Falls, Ore. -- the Federal Bureau of Reclamation was threatening to cut off irrigation water to farms in order to protect the supposedly endangered suckerfish. The farmers' complaints that this was environmentalism run amok have gotten little attention from other networks.

''We've gotten e-mails out the wazoo about this story; people are really responding to it,'' says Smith. ``Is that a conservative bias? I think the media is supposed to be a voice for the voiceless.''

Another story that didn't make much of a splash on other networks -- but led the second half of Hume's evening newscast Wednesday -- was Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) skipping the words ''under God'' when she led the House of Representatives in the pledge of allegiance. Hume showed video, then reported her various explanations (she had trouble swallowing, she was distracted, she forgot).

That the big three broadcast networks, CNN and The New York Times weren't interested in these stories is exactly the point, says Smith.

''We don't come from an elite Eastern media philosophy,'' he says. ``We're from fly-over land. There are tens of millions of people in the middle of America, in the middle of the country where the food is grown and they still have a family dinner on Sunday night, that feels unserved by the major media.''

Not only is there a difference in what Fox News reports, there's a huge difference in the way they're reported. ''Fox is news with an attitude,'' observes Al Sunshine, who spent five years at CNN as a reporter during the network's early days and now is with WFOR-CBS 4. ``They've got characters on there. CNN used to have a bit of an attitude, a lot of characters, but it doesn't anymore.''

That attitude ranges from O'Reilly going for a guest's throat (figuratively, at least so far) during an interview, to Smith's regular sardonic references to accused al Qaeda soldier John Walker Lindh as ``Jihad Johnny.''

It surfaces not only on the morning-zoo Fox and Friends, where a story is backed by a graphic labeled ''Silly Government Spending,'' but on Hume's comparatively sober Special Report, where he introduced a story on a new media study last fall this way: ``Over at ABC News, where the wearing of American flag lapel pins is banned, Peter Jennings and his team have devoted far more time to the coverage of civilian casualties in Afghanistan than either of their broadcast competitors.''

''There's an attitude all right,'' Smith says bluntly. ``We like attitude. We think attitude sells. I get excited about the day's events. P---ed off, revved up, fired up . . . Why hide that? It's a bigger fib to sit there read evvverrry storrrry liiiiike thiiis, which anchors have done since the beginning of time.''

The most famous -- or infamous -- manifestation of the Fox News attitude was the hiring of macho hotdog Geraldo Rivera as a war correspondent. Rivera promptly announced he was taking a gun to Afghanistan to kill Osama bin Laden, filed an ''exclusive report'' from a battleground that turned out to be several hundred miles away from him, and declared on the air Israel's treatment of Palestinians reminded him of ``what Hitler and those Nazi pigs inflicted on the Jewish race during the second world war.''

Ailes personally made the decision to hire Rivera, partly ''to annoy all the people who said we were right-wing nuts, who now have to explain how we hired a very, very liberal guy like Geraldo,'' but mostly because he thinks Rivera's antics make for great television.

''Do I have second thoughts about hiring Geraldo?'' asks Ailes rhetorically. ``I have second thoughts every 15 minutes. But I love him. He's a great journalist who is also a TV star who is also a pain in the a-- who is also a kind person . .

``I get mad at him once a day. But I can tell you that if everyone approached their job with the passion he does, I couldn't argue with them.''

Once he has killed bin Laden and brought peace to the Middle East, Rivera will return to New York to host a show focusing on either crime or war reporting. Ailes has other plans afoot, but he doesn't want to tip his hand to CNN, which he accuses of slavishly imitating every new Fox innovation, from program concepts to graphic innovations.

'I like to surprise the bastards, I like to keep their `let's copy Fox' crew on 24-hour shifts,'' Ailes says. ``Let's just say we are planning ways of keeping them awake.''

***The dimensions of Fox's victory are all the more impressive because CNN -- which had a 15-year head start -- is actually available in nine million more homes. ***

Bump for Fox News Network! We switched to satellite years ago, just to get Fox News Network, and today it's still the best thing on the "tube."

I'm hoping you'll bump my post for Star Parker since it is a win win deal to hook her up with Fox News...Please Help keep this post on top, everyone...Star is going to be considered as a partner for Sean Hannity...This could be a Conservative Dream Team! I taught her how to conjugate the verb "to FREEP, and She just lit up and said "I love it!"

Click Here to Freep Star Parker to Fox News!

The problem is that nothing much ever happens over that part of the country...

ducks....

I was in France last week and only had CNN. And the only thing on the channel (night and day) was a drumbeat of the Le Pen election (I looked out the window - looking for tanks and riots - there were none).

CNN's mysticism and wishful thinking (underlying ideology) do not belong in objective news reports. The real news is that the world is dumping socialism. The world is dumping CNN.

I work at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and for quite some time there was a running "war" going on in the embassy cafeteria as to which news program would be on the cafeteria television. Those of us not in the State Dept. (DOD, DEA, FBI, CIA, INS, etc.) preferred to watch Fox News while eating lunch. The State Dept. socialists preferred CNN. We won initially because us non-State types are carnivorous... the State herbivores backed down in fear. However, they won eventually since the ambassador here (Davidow) is a major socialist and he "decreed" the television would remain on CNN.

Pinging and asking for Freepers to help Freep Star Parker to Fox News with Sean Hannity...Fox Phone # is

1-888-369-4762...

Comments@foxnews.com

We can really get some "juice" with her for letting Fox know that she just mentioned it to one person and they got swamped within 24 hours!!!

Best Regards,

Thanks for posting this! This is probably the best article I have read yet about this. Usually these articles are full of lame excuses of why Fox is doing so well - this one really touched on the truth.

I've been a FNC watcher since 1996.

Ha! Go to the front of the class!

I taught her how to conjugate the verb "to FREEP, and She just lit up and said "I love it!"

Bump!

Promise me you'll never tell me that Cincinatus has a pickup truck and a black lab and you as well, because if true, HE STOLE MY LIFE!!!;-)

Usually these articles are full of lame excuses of why Fox is doing so well

I guess they ran out of excuses. Ha! Now CNN has hired Donahue. I guess they don't care about ratings.
It's not that they don't have a clue, so it must be, they do have a LIBERAL agenda.
Now, they're giving Donohue a megaphone so they can shout it from the rooftops.
What I can't figure out is, why does CNN still have 4 times the ad revenue? Are advertisers so flush
with money they can afford to keep giving it to CNN? I thought the smart money went with a winner.

However, they won eventually since the ambassador here (Davidow) is a major socialist and he "decreed" the television would remain on CNN.

Good grief! Couldn't you get another TV? That's as bad as airports running "big brother" CNN at the gates.

No pickup at the moment and currently petless. But hey, I'm all he needs! LOL!

Then, Like OJ and Robert Blake, I must continue the search for the perpetrator(s).

CNN's mysticism and wishful thinking (underlying ideology) do not belong in objective news reports. The real news is that the world is dumping socialism. The world is dumping CNN.

Some day soon now, they may even start teaching in colleges that socialism fails.

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