By MATT KEMPNER Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer

CNN's Larry King has been deposed, again.

In another blow to Atlanta-based CNN, the network's top show, "Larry King Live," attracted fewer viewers in October than Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes," which airs in the same 9 p.m. period.

The left-vs.-right show with Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes attracted an average audience of 1,650,000 compared with 1,577,000 for King, according to Nielsen Media Research.

It was the first time "Hannity & Colmes" had bested CNN's suspender-clad veteran interviewer for an entire month. But it wasn't the first time King has been beaten. Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, whose "The O'Reilly Factor" airs an hour earlier than King's program, has been attracting a bigger audience than King for months.

"The numbers speak for themselves," Fox News spokeswoman Tracey Spector said of the "Hannity & Colmes" victory.

The show benefits heavily from following O'Reilly's top-rated program, although CNN pointed out that many of O'Reilly's viewers don't stick around to watch "Hannity & Colmes." And even as the competition pulled ahead, King's audience grew from September to October.

Fueled by the sniper story, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC all pulled in larger audiences for October compared with the prior month, preliminary figures show.

CNN's "American Morning With Paula Zahn" sharply narrowed the audience lead held by "Fox & Friends." The gap with the Fox News morning show diminished to about 6 percent in October, down from 28 percent in September.

-- Anonymous, October 29, 2002

Answers

Skippy Reads the News By Tammy Bruce FrontPageMagazine.com | October 29, 2002

I am getting increasingly irritated with the garbage CNN is trying to pass as news programming. It has gotten so bad over there I thought "Jackass—The Movie" was about Ted Turner. With hosts like Connie "Huh?" Chung and Aaron "Howdy" Brown, they’ve caused a catastrophe that even Christiane Amanpour doesn’t seem willing to cover.

These days, when I want news, I watch Greta Van Susteren. Who would have figured that? But that’s exactly why Fox continues to show CNN no mercy when it comes to the ratings wars. It makes sense to most of us why Fox beats CNN—it’s because we really do want fair and balanced news. We’re tired of the usual Ted Turner inspired Leftist tripe fashioned as objective news gathering. We’re simply tired of being taken advantage of and, frankly, lied to.

Keep in mind, Fox isn’t beating CNN only because CNN is pathetically hopeless. Fox is actually getting better than CNN. That fact became crystal clear on one of the more important nights of the Beltway Sniper coverage. Last Wednesday, the evening we knew the suspects had been identified, a restless clicker finger brought me face-to-face with the dreaded Clueless-But-Sanctimonious-Anchorman, also known as CNN’s Aaron Brown.

I was watching the Greta show at the point when the depraved sniper bastards were still being termed ‘persons of interest’ by the authorities and we were all waiting for the names to be announced. Then, Rita Cosby, the other reason why Fox is kicking CNN’s derriere, came on Greta’s show with the scoop. Cosby was breathless after literally running down the hallway with the names of Muslim miscreant John Muhammad and his little murderous Jamaican sidekick Lee Malvo. It was one of those Breaking News moments when the usually overused term was truly deserved. I was impressed.

Then, out of simple curiosity, I clicked over to CNN and I fell smack-dab into the smarmy-golly pit of Aaron Brown. There he was, doing his best imitation of Jimmy Stewart, while unbeknownst to him his former colleague had just nailed his increasingly irrelevant bottom to the wall. He didn’t know the names of the alleged snipers. If he was watching Fox, though, he would have. Skippy, by the way, was Aaron Brown’s nickname in high school-- a nickname that reeks of silly nothingness. Some people say that we end up looking like our dogs or our nicknames. Brown must not have a dog.

Indeed, he was skipping along oblivious to the fact that the world had just passed him by—and led by none other than Greta. Yes, Skippy, I think she was yelling "Yee haw!" as she left you in her News Dust. Finally, after about two minutes Skippy reported what we Fox viewers already knew.

Greta not only beat Brown that night, she beat everyone. Literally. Drudge reported about the important night, "Greta Van Susteren stunned the TV world after she emerged as the top-rated show on all of cable Wednesday night in prime -- outpacing even non-news channels! In the high-stakes drama and swirl of breaking news sniper coverage, Greta rocketed to Number One as the case was coming to its dramatic climax…"

While some of us had difficulty with her history of defending the indefensible, I think she’s proven herself worthy by delivering a news/feature program that doesn’t insult our intelligence. She is in fact now the highest rated woman in cable news. Each month she wins the 10pm news slot on cable, which means she beats her former employer CNN and Brown, their flagship news program. I’m obviously not the only one watching.

It’s not a news flash that I don’t like Aaron Brown. I suppose CNN hired him because they got mistook his pretentious ‘golly-gee’ approach as reflective of some Deep Newsman Insight. They must have been surprised to find out they got nothing more than Ted Baxter on Valium.

The fact that Brown should be selling shoes instead of delivering the news became painfully evident the night Greta ran away with the country. Brown sure is a flagship for CNN—the flagship of moral relativism and political correctness. As an example, while the rest of the news world was calling John Mohammed by his correct name—John Mohammed—Brown would only refer to him as John Alan Williams, his name before he became a Muslim. Brown called him Williams all night long. At one point they actually put up on the screen "Mohammed Williams," allowing Brown to avoid saying the word Mohammed.

Could this have been CNN just getting it wrong? Hardly. They can’t be that out of step. The history of that network, its boss and its people is one from the Left—the kind of Left that seems more concerned about not offending Muslims than it is to report the news accurately.

Brown wasn’t any better when Lee Malvo was identified as a citizen of Jamaica. Brown added to that report, "I don’t know why that’s relevant." Skippy had better quickly find out because everyone understands except him.

In his politically correct confusion that night, Brown exposed himself as a man determined to save us from our racist, Muslim-hating selves. Yes, we learned, once again, that a Muslim had probably murdered another bunch of people, with his illegal alien buddy. But please Skippy, save us. Make sure we think nice, calm thoughts so we don’t think critically, come to judgement, or as the Fox News Channel would encourage, "decide" for ourselves. For without you, we would view the world realistically, leaving you all alone in your pit of nonjudgmental morally vacuous faux serenity. Oops. According to the Nielsen ratings, you already are alone!

-- Anonymous, October 29, 2002

"Skippy"??? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Aaron Brown is so, so, um, peanut butter. Hard to spread when it has no warmth in it, unpalatable without the salt, cheap and colorless. That about do it?

-- Anonymous, October 29, 2002