USA Today’s Peter Johnson looked at ten years of FNC a year ago. Yesterday was the network’s 11th Anniversary. (via TVNewser)

Update: I rushed to throw this up last night without paying proper attention to what I was doing. Consquently, I threw up a year old article thinking it was a new article. My mistake.

Roger Ailes, the man behind the curtain at Fox News Channel, says he was at a dinner party recently when one of the guests asked him, “Isn’t Fox News too conservative?”

“I said, ‘Are you comfortable with CNN?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ How about CBS, ABC, NBC? ‘Absolutely.’ What about The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times? ‘Fine.’ National Public Radio and PBS? ‘Very good.’ So I said, ‘But this little cable channel is making you crazy? If all the media tipped to the right, I’d probably be the biggest liberal. But you’ve got to have debate.’ ”

In just 10 years, Fox News — the channel liberals love to hate — has transformed the cable news landscape with its in-your-face brand of news with ‘tude. In the process, it has reduced granddaddy CNN to a distant second and NBC’s cable news venture, MSNBC, to an also-ran. Fox News’ combative Bill O’Reilly has become a household name, drawing more than 2 million viewers a night. Sean Hannity, Shepard Smith and Greta Van Susteren are cable news stars. On-air barbs by them and Fox News correspondents have ignited debates in journalism circles about whether objective news can stay relevant, particularly in an Internet era that gives ordinary Americans the power to vent about anything in blogs.

The New York Post’s Liz Smith profiles Chris Matthews…

WHEN CHRIS sat down in Michael’s restaurant to talk to me about his lat est book, “Life’s a Campaign,” I felt I was in an electrified presence. He speaks in a rush, he looks around, he has just come from a successful moment on “The View,” he has another appointment pressing. He’s a busy, in demand, kind of guy.

He was teaching me something very valuable - what he calls “the art of seduction” - when his wife, Kathleen, joined us. And it worked; it was very effective - a method whereby the seducer keeps quiet, gazes unblinkingly into your eyes and persists in this listening pose. “I remember that look,” said Mrs. Matthews, who has been married to Chris for 27 years. They have three all-but-grown children. One wants to be an actor, one a film director and their daughter is a freshman at Penn. Kathleen says, “We always brought our kids to New York from Washington to take them to the theater, and they have all fallen in love with Manhattan!”

What’s Hot:

Chris Matthews - For all the wrong reasons. First he gets destroyed by Stewart on “The Daily Show” (unfairly in my opinion, but destroyed nonetheless). Then he celebrates the 10th Anniversary of Hardball by making some comments at the party about the current administration which quickly spread all over the internet. On Friday, it was reported by TVNewser that Matthews would talk about the comments on Hardball but to me it seemed like the Hardball segment didn’t really address the issue head on but skirted around it…

More cable news channel sniping - FNC had been on the receiving end of some jabs recently from both CNN (over O’Reilly) and MSNBC (Dan Abrams on FBN talent looking like Joey Lawrence). This week saw a concerted effort on Fox and Friends to take aim at CNN’s “God’s Warriors” series and, late in the week, devoting time to Chris Matthews’ comments.

Dueling Happy Hours - CNBC launched a new segment on “Fast Money” called “Happy Hour”. It turns out FBN was planning its own program called “Happy Hour”. The similarities and coincidences were so many that charges of theft by the peacock business channel circulated the blogs, including this one. Friday, “Your World” took the wraps off Happy Hour as the talent took repeated shots at its soon to be rival network. CNBC, for its part, maintains that their version was part of the original concept of “Fast Money” but wasn’t being used due to Fast Money’s current time slot but would be used in its new timeslot.

FBN’s microsite launches - The first real hints of what FBN would be about surfaced this week with the launch of FBN’s microsite. Still, most of the programming specifics have yet to be revealed.

What’s Not:

Nothing made the cut this week.