The NYTimes’ Jacques Steinberg sat down with CNN’s Campbell Brown last week as Brown tries to gain a toehold on the competitive 8pmET cable news hour. And she’s doing it by way of setting herself apart from the FNC and MSNBC alternatives. “They’re partisans,” she says of Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann in particular. “You’re not going to see me ever be partisan. I’ll never take a position on a candidate or an issue.”
Steinberg writes about this recent commentary Brown delivered on Gov. Sarah Palin and this earlier “grilling” of McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds that the show is “finding a voice and identity.” And the ratings are beginning to show it. Steinberg writes, “Brown’s viewership is more than a third larger than those for ‘Paula Zahn Now’ and an interim replacement, ‘Out in the Open,’ on CNN during the same period a year earlier. On a few nights in September, according to a CNN analysis of Nielsen data, Ms. Brown even managed to surpass Mr. Olbermann, at least among viewers aged 25 to 54, whom advertisers most wish to reach.”
• Earlier on TVNewser: Campbell Brown on Sexism and Sarah Palin…