Campbell Brown Ratings Don't Measure Up To Hype: "No Bias, No Bull, No Ratings"

Brown's show, Campbell Brown: No Bias, No Bull, debuted a year ago today, although it was several weeks before she was appearing on a nightly basis and several months before it found a name. No Bias was CNN's No. 1 show in total viewers last month, and it's one of the few prime time cable news shows to show ratings growth after the election. (It's up 35 percent in the key demographic of adults 25 to 54; The O'Reilly Factor, which airs opposite No Bias on Fox News, is also up marginally over the same period.)

But slicing the numbers in a different way makes No Bias look more like a continuation of CNN's long-running problem in the 8 o'clock hour, where the network competes not only with O'Reilly but also with Keith Olbermann, arguably the second-biggest personality in cable news, and one who, like O'Reilly, has a built-in audience of ideological dittoheads. For the month of February to date (which for Nielsen's purposes actually began Jan. 26), No Bias is running not only behind The O'Reilly Factor and Countdown in its hour, but also behind Headline News's Nancy Grace, who's been surging in the ratings thanks to her coverage of Caylee Anthony. And while those other shows are all up year-over-year, No Bias drew 8 percent fewer total viewers and 20 percent fewer demo viewers than the network did a year ago. ("They should call it No Bias, No Bull, No Ratings," snipes a cable competitor -- you can probably guess which one.)

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