Two weeks after rejecting a concession package with management, the Boston Globe's guild "re-negotiated" a new deal with parent New York Times Co. that varied little from one that was rejected by a mere 12 votes.

Guild leadership this time expressed confidence that the rank-and-file will ratify the new agreement quickly. The package still calls for a $10 million concession from the guild to allow the Globe to stay afloat. And all key provisions that management had demanded, including the elimination of the lifetime job guarantee, are also left unchanged from the original deal. The only major difference appears to be that the guild would accept a 5.9 percent paycut instead of an 8.4% one, in exchange for deeper cuts in other benefits packages.

When the first deal was scuttled by the guild vote, management immediately imposed a 23% paycut that had been in effect for the past two weeks.

What's also different is that the NYT Co. has also put the Globe up for sale. Recent reports indicated that Stephen Pagliuca, co-owner of the Boston Celtics, Jack Connors, co-founder of a major advertising firm and chairman of Partners HealthCare, and Stephen Taylor, a former Globe executive and member of the family that sold the Globe to the Times in 1993 are among potential bidders. The Time Co. paid over $1 billion for the Globe but is now willing to part with the paper for around $20 million.

The guild has scheduled for a vote on July 20. And now with the backing with its leadership, most expect the new package to be ratified.

Brian Mooney, a veteran reporter who spoke out against the last proposal, says he remains unsure of this agreement until he reviews it. But he said the general rank and file view seems to be it is worth accepting.

"Everyone wants to see the numbers and I don't think it will be unanimous, but it probably puts some wind at their backs," he said of the supporters. "It is a tentative agreement which means the bargaining committee and the company have agreed this is the best they will do."

So just what did the guild's 'No' decision, by a razor-thin 12 votes, mean for the future of the Boston Globe?

Almost a suicide, notes Alex Jones, a former New York Times staffer writing in the Daily Beast:

Alas, in this case, the situation was like mouthing off to a cop. It may offer momentary satisfaction, but you pay a severe price. One can only imagine the conversations between spouses in the wake of the "no" vote as the reality of what has been unleashed hit home.

Looked at objectively, The Globe's unions have almost no leverage. The Guild, which is the only large union at the paper to defy the Times Company's demands, has begun a legal battle in federal court to stop the wage cut, but that is unlikely to succeed. The Times justified imposing the cut by declaring negotiations at an impasse, and fighting that in the courts can easily take years and be very expensive. The prospect of getting the Times to negotiate a better deal is all but nil, because doing so would require reopening negotiations with all the other unions.

A strike would be suicidal. And everyone--including the Guild members who voted "no"--recognizes that this is not a situation in which the company is protecting profits that it refuses to share but one in which the goal is to stem catastrophic losses.

The New York Times Co., after unilaterally imposing a 23% paycut on guild employees following the 'No' vote, has put the paper up for sale. But given that the Globe will lose an estimated $135 million over 2008 and '09, plus the ongoing labor dispute, it's doubtful that a viable buyer would emerge quickly. The Times paid over $1 billion when it acquired the Globe in 1993. Now the paper is worth less than $20 million.

The guild has asked the company to reopen negotiations, but so far, management has rejected such calls. Members of the guild have gone as far as pleading with NYT Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr., long a champion of labor causes, but it was met with a terse rebuttal.

"We are now left with no alternative other than to proceed with the wage reduction," Sulzberger wrote in an e-mail. "Without that, the Globe will be unable to effectuate the savings already ratified by its other unions, in which case it simply cannot survive."

By mere 12 votes, the Boston Globe's guild rejected a deal negotiated with parent New York Times Co. a month ago. Management then wasted no time in imposing a 23% paycut on all guild members, effective next week.

The New York Times Co. had threatened to shut down the Globe outright if the four major unions did not come to an agreement that would save the company $20 million. After contentious negotiations, each union reached a deal with management and all except the guild immediately ratified the pacts.

In the month leading up to the vote, the guild leadership made no secret that it came to the deal under duress and all but invited the rank-and-file to vote it down. And they did, by a vote of 277-265, rejecting a new contract that included a 10% pay cut, reduction to health and retirement benefits, including a pension freeze, and the elimination of lifetime job guarantees for about 170 veteran members.

The sides may be headed to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) but in the meantime, a new round of negotiations will probably commence. The union has little recourse in reversing the unilateral paycut except to file a grievance. Management, on the other hand, will not be able to concede too much to the guild lest it nullifies the deals it already has with other unions.

A fault line within the guild may be developing as well. Its negotiating team, lead by Dan Totten, fought hard to preserve the lifetime guarantee provision until the very end. On Monday night, guild members divided sharply on how they voted based on whether they have that lifetime guarantee or not.

Globe City Hall Bureau Chief Donovan Slack, who voted yes, believes the paper will lose "tons of amazingly, talented journalists" if the company imposes the 23-percent pay cut.

"It's really frustrating that it was so close," said Slack, who has been at the paper for six years. "To think that only 12 people separated what could have been the end of this nightmare, from what will now, most definitely, turn into a prolonged battle with too many casualties to even calculate right now."

Before the results were announced, Globe reporter Scott Allen said he voted no and described a "very serious" mood over on Morrissey Boulevard.

"As much as the New York Times needs the concessions, and as much as we all recognize that we have to do our part and we want to do our part, the Times did not try very hard to make the deal fair or equitable for us," said Allen, who has a lifetime job guarantee.

The other unions, including pressmen, drivers and mailroom workers who have already approved deals totaling $10 million in cuts, are not sympathetic to the guild. They see the 'No' vote as an irresponsible move that may scuttle a new contract that had been nearly in place.

And finally, the threat of shutting down the paper should the impasse drag on is very real, according to Wachovia Senior Analyst John Janedis:

The New York Times Co. is set to lose $85 million on an operating basis. The plant closures, reduced compensation and increased circulation revenue should help but not enough. The paper is on track to lose a "significant amount of money this year," Janedis wrote.

"While the potential closure of the paper may be viewed by some as a negotiating tool, we think ongoing double-digit ad revenue declines and labor issues could make a hybrid print/web edition a reality, ultimately leading to significantly more job losses."

It looks like one of the biggest casualties of the Obama Administration is CNN.

Fourth months into the new presidency, television ratings for cable news networks on the right and left have improved, both at the expense of CNN, the one-time industry leader and purported non-partisan network.

In May, Fox News continued its reign as the cable news leader with more audience than No. 2 MSNBC and No. 3 CNN combined. The nine top rated prime-time news shows were all Fox News programs, led by "The O'Reilly Factor" - the top show for the 102nd consecutive month - "Hannity" and "Glenn Beck."

MSNBC, for the second time in three months, trumped CNN in total viewers, solidifying its position as the No. 2 network. "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" is the only non-Fox News program to crack the top 10, and "The Rachel Maddow Show" has topped CNN's "Larry King Live" at the 9 p.m. slot for the seventh time in eight months among viewers aged 25-54.

Most troubling for CNN is the continuing decline of its heavily-promoted "Anderson Cooper 360." Its sharp drop in viewership hasn't stopped since Election Day, with several nights this month failing to reach even half a million (by contrast, O'Reilly pulls an average of nearly 3 million).

There's no question the swing to the center has hurt the network, notes Michael Calderon of Politico:

"The audience is becoming increasingly accustomed to finding opinions in prime-time," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism. ...

And there's a certain irony in all the hand-wringing because a news network decides upon taking a less ideological approach to the news in prime-time. In the 1990's, CNN couldn't shake the "Clinton News Network" nickname among conservatives, and yet now, is viewed as the more moderate network given MSNBC's prime-time lurch to the left.

One silver lining for CNN is the rapid improvement of HLN, formerly Headline News. Led by Nancy Grace's reporting on various missing children and social gossip, HLN is up a whopping 43% in total viewers compared to May 2008. HLN even surpassed CNN for the most desired 25-54 demographic for third place (219,000 vs. 216,000) in May.

As Chrysler and now GM filed for bankruptcy protection, the ripple effects are being felt at Detroit's newspapers. Under reorganization, both automakers will be forced to slash their advertising budgets, and that hurts the Detroit Free Press and News, who are already in a world of hurt.

Merely two months after introducing an innovative program to drastically reduce printing and delivering of the papers, both publications are forced to cut more cost in the face of dwindling advertising revenue. Last week, the Free Press announced that it's reducing 10 percent of its newsroom staff, eliminating 20 jobs. This week, a furlough program is introduced, with more layoffs expected in the next two quarters.

Here's the memo obtained by Media Watch:

From: Anders, Jeanette
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 3:33 PM
To: Detroit Newspaper Partnership
Subject: Furlough Implementation

As you are aware, staff reductions were implemented throughout Detroit Media Partnership and the Detroit Free Press on Friday and negotiations are ongoing with several unions. Eliminating those positions was an extremely difficult step toward addressing the continuing declines we are seeing in advertising revenue due to economic conditions.

However, in an effort to help minimize this most recent round of staff reductions, it is necessary to implement other cost cutting measures.

As a result, we are implementing one-week furloughs for non-bargaining unit employees in the Partnership and the Free Press, as has been the case at most other Gannett properties.

Each affected employee will need to schedule these furloughs during June, July, August or September.

Attached are FAQ's about the program. Managers will share more detailed communication this week, including procedures on how to schedule.

Although this is a difficult decision, we believe it is one of the necessary measures to help meet targeted expense reductions. I appreciate all you are doing every day to contribute to our transformation and our business success.

This story, in a nutshell, tells all you need to know about the sad state of journalism.

A little more than a month ago, immediately upon the death of French composer Maurice Jarre, an Irish college student inserted a phony quote in the Jarre entry in Wikipedia. Shane Fitzgerald wanted to see if he could fool the vaunted open-source encyclopedia.

Wikipedia caught on pretty quickly, but the media fell for the hoax and swallowed it whole.

"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."

This fake quote appeared in a number of English-language publications worldwide. And until last Monday, when Fitzgerald came forward to reveal his "experiment," the quote was going down in history as fact.

Talk about putting words in a dead man's mouth.

The Guardian, so far, is the only paper that has acknowledged that it fell for the hoax. Others have quietly deleted the offending quote in their online archives. Wikipedia, on the other hand, caught the unsourced quote quickly and removed it twice - but not quick enough for the obit writers to pilfer it off the site.

That this outrage could happen is but an illustration of the sad state of the modern media. Its taste for instant dissemination is sometimes irreconcilable with the need for accuracy. Particularly in an age of severe newsroom cuts when skeletal crews are often overwhelmed by their workload, this shouldn't be surprising.

There was a time when obituaries were finely tuned, painstakingly researched work of art (not fiction). As such, I want to present you the best obit you've never read.

More than a decade ago, Ed Beitiks was tasked to write an obituary on Kurt Vonnegut, who was neither in ill health nor all that old at the time. But it was an old newspaper practice to have obits "in the can" just so the paper wouldn't be caught out when somebody really do drop dead on deadline.

The thing is, Vonnegut ended up outliving Ed, who was a prince of a man and a masterful storyteller. A Vietnam vet who fought brain cancer (from exposure to Agent Orange and war wounds) for the better part of a decade, Beitiks wrote the obit for the old San Francisco Examiner before he passed away in 2001. His Vonnegut obit never ran because ol' Ed hated the rival Chronicle, which would later merge with the Ex after being purchased by the Hearst Corporation. Ed never wanted his byline to appear in the Chron and his editors honored his wish.

Nevertheless, when Vonnegut died six years after Ed's own passing, his obit was resurrected by editor Allen Johnson (an Indiana native, a huge Vonnegut fan, Ed's friend and the best man at my wedding). It appeared in Chuck Nevius' blog in its entirety, but never ran in the Chronicle.

Ed didn't have the benefit of Wikipedia. He didn't need it.

Is there nothing sacred anymore?

I first found out about what happened to David Steele and two other Baltimore Sun staffers from an inning-by-inning blog in the Orange County Register (it came in during the eighth inning). I was flabbergasted: Getting laid off by phone. In the press box. In the middle of the game.

I've known David since our days as fellow sports columnists in the San Francisco Bay Area. He's a very good writer, well-versed in all sports but particularly the NBA, of which he was a beat writer for more than a decade. But he's also a great guy, someone who's most definitely paid his dues in this business and yet doesn't have an air of attitude. (Sportswriters can be such curmudgeons sometimes.)

David moved (back) to Baltimore in 2004 to get back to his roots, to be closer to his family. The Sun did its best to pry him away from the San Francisco Chronicle. And now, in less than five years, they couldn't even bother to say goodbye in person.

"I live 10 blocks away from the paper," David said to me the other day, with a chuckle. "But they had to FedEx me all the paperwork. I guess they really didn't want to see me."

He was ready and willing to tell his story. Not just for himself, but for all of his fellow journalists who were so unceremoniously dumped. It needs to be told and he's glad to do it (as he did today in an exclusive for RealClearSports):

And just like that, I was unattached, by phone, while on an assignment.

The next couple of hours were a flurry of shocked expressions and reactions, condolences, bitterness and dread, plus lots of phone calls to family members and friends whom, ironically, I didn't want to hear the news from someone else. Rick - who is roughly the age I was when the National sank - looked as if someone had drained all the blood from his body.

The overriding theme from all concerned: "They couldn't tell you to your face?''

Just why is that?

Last Tuesday, the day before David was laid off, the Sun fired 21 editors. They were immediately escorted them out of the building upon learning the news, by security goons. Marched out of the office. The perp walk. Most criminals were treated with more dignity.

What was management afraid of? That they would smash their desks, assault the bean counters with a pica pole or infect their computers with worms and viruses? Look at the Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Didn't their staffs put out top-notch papers to announce their own demise? Did anybody blow up the building on the way out?

These are difficult economic times. People get that. They can accept the fact that they might be laid off. They just deserve a little more respect, that's all.

But all this is just a continuation of Jonestown-style suicides committed by newspapers. They're getting rid of the very people who could help their survival. If anything, they need to keep talented people who can produce the content that keep them afloat instead of booting them out to the curb. This makes as much sense as shooting the soldiers after their officer kept leading them to defeat in battle.

Dan Rodricks, a longtime Sun columnist who wasn't laid off during the two-day, 61-person purge, had this to say:

I thought by now The Sun and other newspapers would have figured out how to make money off the Internet, and that doesn't seem to be happening. We lost the classifieds; the recession has taken a wicked toll on retail advertising . . . so here we are, in bankruptcy with Tribune Co. The last round of cuts at The Sun were not buyouts--they were layoffs--and no one seems to know where we're going, if anywhere.

Say this about the newspaper business - it's not sunk because of its labor problems, unlike the automobile industry. Most journalists don't belong to unions and the few who do aren't paid all that well anyway. And unlike the workers at the UAW, they're not going to get a piece of the company in a restructuring deal.

They get a cardboard box to collect their belongings. Or just a phone call.

At the end, the guild caved.

The Boston Globe's largest union reached a tentative agreement with management just after 3 a.m. today, the last of the paper's unions to sign off on concessions to the parent New York Times Co. The guild, which represents the newsroom, agreed to a substantial pay cut and unpaid furloughs, but more importantly, it finally allowed for modifications to the lifetime job guarantee provisions. The guild's previous insistence to keep the guarantee whole had caused the negotiations to reach an impasse.

Neither side released much details on the new agreement, which is still pending a vote by the union members. But the deal should be enough to lift the New York Times Co.'s threat to shut down the Globe. The company had set a May 1 deadline, extended it to May 3, before reaching agreements with all unions.

The NYT Co. won hard concessions, totaling $20 million, from the unions. But its problems at the Globe may not be over for a long while. The paper is expected to lose $85 million this year. And the threat of shutting down the Globe may have an adverse effect on the paper's circulation, which has dwindled steadily since the company bought it in 1993 for $1.1 billion.

If you thought last night's Red Sox-Yankees game took forever (because of a rain delay), you haven't kept up with the marathon negotiations between the unions of the Boston Globe and New York Times Co.

Talks broke off yesterday morning after management rejected the "last, best offer" from the guild. The company didn't follow through on a threat to file a plant closing notice with the state, as it's apparently confident that a deal will be reached. It has an agreement with every union except the guild, which represents the newsroom.

Negotiations are scheduled to resume at 5 p.m. today. The sticking point now is the guild's insistence to keep the "lifetime guarantee" intact. Management so far has not been willing to budge.

There may be some dissension growing out of the ranks as the Boston Herald disclosed that Dan Totten, the guild's lead negotiator, has seen his pay increase by 12 percent over the past three years. "I think it's unconscionable that union leadership is not suffering the same cuts that we are," said one guild member who has seen the filings and didn't want to be identified.

Meanwhile, the New York Times didn't stop negotiating in the Big Apple. Yesterday, the Times' own staff agreed to a 5% paycut, effective immediately. This deal saves the Times from trimming 80 jobs for now, but does not rule out future layoffs.

At least in this case, the New Yorkers proved to be more of a pushover than Bostonians. But the fact that the paper from its biggest rival city owns the Globe has been a sore spot in Beantown since the Times acquired it in 1993:

Boston residents have long resented the takeover of the Globe by a company based in New York, with which the region competes in sports, banking and cultural bragging rights. ...

"From the moment the Times Co. purchased The Globe in 1993, it has treated New England's largest newspaper like a cheap whore," former Globe columnist Eileen McNamara wrote last month in the Herald. "It pimped her out for profit during the booming 1990s and then pillaged her when times got tough. It closed her foreign bureaus and cheapened her coverage of everything from the fine arts to the hard sciences."

Yes, she said "cheap whore."

The game of brinksmanship between the New York Times Co., and the Boston Globe's guild is coming to a head. At stake: The continued existence of New England's largest newspaper, first published in 1872.

With all other unions having agreed to concessions pending a formal vote by their members, the guild, which represents the newsroom employees, is holding out. While it has given the $10 million in concessions management demanded, it is unwilling to let go of a "lifetime guarantee" provision that affects over 500 former employees and 190 current ones.

The guild's latest offer was rejected last night, prompting its negotiators to leave the table as of this morning. More talks may resume tomorrow, but no resolution is likely unless the guild is willing to relent on this one issue.

That the guild is playing hardball, in the face of a threatened shutdown, is surprising. Elsewhere in the country, almost every union has quickly acquiesced to management demands given the fast unraveling of the newspaper business.

While the NYT Co. has backed off an earlier threat to file a plant closing notice, it's still not impossible for the paper to be shuttered. The Times paid $1.1 billion to acquire the Globe in 1993, and now it's expected to lose about $85 million this year at the paper. The circulation of the Globe has dwindled from 508,800 in 1993 to 382,500 today.

Dan Totten, president of the guild, said his union is negotiating in good faith. But the union's unwillingness to give in on the "lifetime guarantee" issue is not winning any friends or sympathies.

The idea of lifetime jobs seems hopelessly quaint in this era of Darwinian globalization, continuous technological disruption and profound economic uncertainty.

It also was born of arrogance on the part of publishers who thought their market supremacy would endure forever and arrogance on the part of unions who once wielded sufficient power to intimidate management into agreeing to this perfectly preposterous proposition.

Apart from federal judges and tinhorn dictators, no one has the luxury of a job for life. And no one should.

Across town at the Boston Herald, Howie Carr snickers:

Outside the employees themselves and a few limp bloggers, nobody cares about the Globe's demise. Let the epitaph be: Smug Is Not a Workable Business Plan. These pampered poodles assumed they had a monopoly. Nobody ever has a monopoly, at least not for long. ... One last thing to all my dear friends on the Boulevard.

We're not hiring.

Will the guild dare management to shut down the paper? Will the NYT Co. follow through with its threat? One thing we already know: Despite all of his liberal and union-friendly politics, Pinch Sulzberger is proving to be quite a capitalist when it comes to his own family business (as he should be).

Boston Globe's unions and the paper's parent New York Times Co. continued negotiations well after the expiration of a second deadline imposed by the company.

The NYT Co. originally threatened to shut down the paper if no settlement with the paper's 13 unions were reached by May 1. It was extended to midnight Sunday. As of this morning, tentative deals with several unions have been struck while talks continue with the pressmen's union and the newspaper guild.

As a precautionary measure, however, the paper's management is prepared to file a plant closing notice with the state in case negotiations fall apart.

The sides agreed to "take a break" as of 6:45 a.m. EDT and it's unclear if the deadline has been extended and whether the negotiations will resume later today.

(UPDATE) As of 8 a.m., all unions except the guild have tentative agreements with management pending a vote by members. The pressmen union was the latest to announced its deal. The guild, which represents the newsroom, has stopped negotiations for today after its latest offer was rejected by management.

In the 11th hour, the Boston Globe gets a reprieve - for 48 hours.

Friday was supposed to be the deadline imposed by the parent New York Times Co. for a negotiated settlement to keep the Globe afloat. The company is threatening to shut down the Globe unless the paper's unions agree to concessions totaling $20 million.

Unlike other unions across the country that quickly folded under similar threats, the Globe's unions have negotiated contentiously. The guild, representing the newsroom employees, has been particularly steadfast since it's been asked to absorb half of the $20 million concession the company is seeking - while the other 12 unions are asked to carry the other half.

The deadline has been extended to Sunday at midnight as the sides haggle over an accounting error. Meanwhile, no buyer has emerged to take the paper out of New York Times Co.'s hands - the NYT paid $1.1 billion for the Globe in 1993 and now it's estimated to be worth just $20 million. John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox, has denied interest in buying the Globe.

The paper is covering its potential demise with good cheer, however, with daily updates and a special section on the web to keep the readers apprised of the negotiations. Most indications are that a settlement is within reach. But we won't know for sure until Monday morning.

Maybe.

More people are spending more time reading newspapers - but they're doing it online and without paying. That's the highlight of a rich survey result just released by USC's Annenberg School for Communication.

The annual survey, conducted by Annenberg School's Center for the Digital Future, offers a fascinating look at the changing habits of Internet users in America. It provides robust data on what people do online - whether they shop or pay bill - as well as how their children behave based on the availability of connectivity at home.

But of most interest to this space, as well as the researchers, is the glimpse of the future for the newspaper business. In short, there is a future, just not in print.

Jeffrey Cole, the director of the center, made a bold prediction:

"We're clearly now seeing a path to the end of the printed daily newspapers -- a trend that is escalating much faster than we had anticipated. The decline of newspapers is happening at a pace they never could have anticipated. Their cushion is gone, and only those papers that can move decisively to the Web will survive."

According to the survey, Internet users in 2008 spent 53 minutes per week reading online newspapers, a 28 percent increase over a year ago. Heavy users spent nearly two hours online reading papers' web sites each week. But as a result, 22 percent of the users said they stopped paying for a subscription because they could read the same content online for free.

There is one more piece of disconcerting news for newspapers and other media outlets. While people do flock to these web sites for information, they don't necessarily believe everything in it. According to the survey: Faith in news pages posted by established media (such as nytimes.com and cnn.com) decreased, and is now at the lowest level yet reported in the Digital Future studies that began in 2000.

For more on the survey, you can read the press release and the highlights. If you wish to get all of the 191-page report - be ready to drop 500 bucks - it's available here.

The Tribune Co., already in bankruptcy, continued its bloody purges to reduce cost. After trimming 300 jobs at the Los Angeles Times earlier this year, the axe now fell on the Baltimore Sun. On Wednesday, 61 newsroom employees were dismissed, including 21 senior editors and managers who were immediately ushered out of the newsroom by security guards.

Though the management personnel eliminated were not members of the newspaper guild, the union voiced strong reaction to the mass layoffs.

"Tribune, through careless management practices, has saddled itself under $13 billion in debt and now Baltimore is paying a price," said Cet Parks, Executive Director of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. "Tribune is siphoning good jobs from Baltimore and sending work that talented editors, reporters, photographers, copy editors and designers have done here to its home base in Chicago. That is not right."

In January, the Sun entered into a cooperative arrangement with the Washington Post to cover the Beltway area. At the time, both papers insisted that there would be no newsroom reduction as a result. It took the Tribune Co. exactly four months to renege on that pledge. (The article on the "no reduction" pledge also conveniently disappeared off the Sun's web site.)

But leave it to the Tribune Co. to spin its latest move as a "plan for success, not just survival."

In spite of (or, perhaps because of) the perception that the Fox News Channel is hyper-critical of President Obama, it continues to dominate cable news ratings. In April, Fox News' viewership in fact grew from the previous three months, with an audience that exceeded the combined total of both CNN and MSNBC.

For prime time, (8-11 p.m.), Fox News averaged 551,000 viewers in the target 25-54 demo. MSNBC has jumped past CNN, though still finished a distant second, with 271,000. CNN is third with 248,000 and its little sibling HLN fourth with 231,000. In addition to the growth of Fox News (a staggering 63%) and HLN (47%) over April 2008, MSNBC was up 16%, while CNN was down 12%.

Fox News had the top 11 cable news programs in total viewers and 12 of the top 15 in the demo. The phenomenal success of Glenn Beck's program, at 5 p.m., has helped that growth. In fact, every program on Fox News from 9 a.m. and on has seen at least a 60% percent increase in the demo, led by Beck's 212% over the same period in 2008.

Despite Obama's robust approval ratings, at least one pundit thought Fox News' soaring ratings are a cause for concern for the left:

That most new cable news viewers are turning to Fox, rather than to CNN or MSNBC, is what's scaring the hell out of me. Fox anchors, particularly in primetime, preach a brand of ignorant negativity that will never help us get out of the economic mess we're in. They seem to hope that Obama will fail, while most of the rest of us hope that he will succeed. But, if I'm right when I say "most of us," why is it that more people are watching FoxNews in primetime than CNN and MSNBC combined.

I've written before that I believe what people watch on television more accurately reflects their true feelings than what they tell pollsters over the telephone. If that's the case, it would seem there are more haters than there are hopers, and we are in for a very hard time.