Paul Bedard's latest "Washington Whispers" in US News has some great stuff...Fox News Channel's Brit Hume isn't about to let SpongeBob rest on his little yellow laurels; and more bad news for CNN--MSNBC's gaining on the channel in the primetime demo:
The steady creep to the top for Brit Hume's nightly Special Report on Fox--not just the No.1 Washington-originated cable show but also the fourth in all basic cable at 6 p.m.--has the host eyeing the next victim. "We've been having a series of meetings here about how we can beat Nickelodeon," he says. "We just hope that they don't put SpongeBob SquarePants up against us." Fun aside, Hume's hourlong mix of news and debate now reaches 1.5 million nightly while dominating the key 25-to-54 age demographic. And it happened in a very un-Fox-like way: without fanfare, even though Hume has recently surged to the No. 2 spot among all cable news shows, after Bill O'Reilly.
...OK, so we know that Fox is king of cable news, largely at CNN's expense, but now it looks like Ted Turner's brainchild is under attack from the other side. Little MSNBC is making an advance during the key 6 p.m.-to-9 p.m. period, hounding Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room, Paula Zahn, and Lou Dobbs. "This is really big news," says MSNBC's Jeremy Gaines. First, let's be clear: CNN has more viewers. But, as they say in TV, only the "demo" matters, and in the key 25-to-54 demographic that ad rates are based on, MSNBC is nipping at CNN. Here, The Abrams Report has seen a 35 percent jump in just a year, though it still lags behind Dobbs. But Hardball With Chris Matthews, up 52 percent, edges Blitzer by 1,000 viewers in the demo, and Countdown With Keith Olbermann, up 39 percent, ties Zahn. MSNBC's Gaines credits "consistency" and good hosts for the trend.
