For the first time evah, CNN has dropped into third place among cable news networks, falling behind MSNBC.

Through Wednesday, Fox was averaging 2.73 million prime-time viewers in March. MSNBC had 1.16 million and CNN had 1.14 million. The March ratings period ends Friday, and it's doubtful CNN will be able to overcome MSNBC.

"The fact that one network may have eked out a slight edge in one small slice of the overall business really doesn't say much of anything," Jon Klein, CNN U.S. president, said on Friday. "It's more clear than ever, given the way that our competitors have positioned themselves, that CNN has positioned itself as the real news network."

Relying on news, rather than opinion, leaves CNN more susceptible to higher ratings peaks during big stories and lower valleys in routine times. Yet it's hard to consider the present — new president, economic turmoil and two wars — a slow news period.

CNN's ratings news "is very significant," said Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief and now a professor at George Washington University. "This is a big problem."

More significant is what CNN's ratings problems mean coupled with the daily drumbeat of layoffs in the newspaper industry, he said. With people more interested in hearing things through an ideological prism as a form of entertainment, it diminishes the value of independent voices giving straight news.

"It's getting harder to do real journalism on television," Sesno said. "This is `man the ideological barricades.'"

Two different takes on the nature of the problem, and I think they are both right.

CNN's perception of itself as a "straight news network" is a large part of the problem.

There is no such thing as "straight news" and frankly there never has been. Walter Cronkite let slip the reality of the business several years ago while be interviewed when he mentioned that he missed "shaping the news". That was a huge admission because it correctly represented the modus operandi of new bias--selective reporting. Outside of their opinion and commentary show, all the news networks provide "straight news", but what have they decided to report in "straightforward fashion"?

Whatever they hell they want.

Therein lies the real problem for CNN--what they have decided to report or not report is dragging down the network. The claim that we are in a slow news period when the Obama administration and its cronies on the Hill are spending trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to create machine politics at a national level, just crushes their credibility. They are looking for middle ground where none exists--either you love this (in which case you are Keith Olbermann's kind of pansy...), or you hate it and you are watching Fox News.

The polarization of this country has reached a tipping point.