Forbes’ Lea Goldman predicts Dan Abrams’ days are numbered in 2007 but doesn’t give any evidence to support her prediciton… (bottom of the article)

The Baltimore Sun’s Nick Madigan writes about CNN, HLN, CNBC, and MSNBC copying FNC’s shtick and eating into its ratings lead.

Ever since Fox News Channel, founded in 1996, proved that news delivered with attitude, opinion and even belligerence could wipe the clock of just about any competitor, CNN - once the undisputed leader of the cable news pack - and a handful of smaller channels have been struggling to find a formula that brings in the same kind of numbers

Now, CNN and the others appear to have found an answer. Virtually all the competitors are slashing at the Fox ratings lead by offering their own versions of noisy and opinionated news. CNN has been closing on Fox and the others, including MSNBC and CNBC, have on occasion closed on CNN. They’re all doing it by delivering the news with a strong personal flair.

The most salient examples of the trend are Headline News’s Glenn Beck, who is showing the fastest-rising ratings of anyone on cable news; Keith Olbermann, MSNBC’s pugnacious but cerebral resident lefty; his colleague Chris Matthews, long an opponent of the Iraq war who was recently off the air because of illness but who remains very much in the mix; Nancy Grace, whose acerbic, finger-wagging style on Headline News is aimed primarily at miscreants and their lawyers; and, on CNBC, the manic money maven Jim Cramer, whose flailing arms and booming delivery is sheer entertainment for stock-market players who don’t mind being shouted at.