The rise and fall of CNN

The number of people watching CNN's daytime shows fell from 672,000 to 462,000 last year. In prime-time, it attracts an average of 624,000 viewers. MSNBC gets 763,000. Rupert Murdoch's Fox manages more than two million.

At the same time, the channel has lost many of its top "faces". Last year, Lou Dobbs left, after 27 years. Christiane Amanpour ended her 26-year stint in March. Campbell Brown recently quit her evening politics show, saying: "The simple fact is that not enough people want to watch my programme."

CNN is now squeezed between Fox, with its cast of right-wing pundits such as Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and MSNBC, which offers left-wing equivalents like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann. Unsurprisingly, its provocative rivals make the headlines and get the audiences. Twenty years after a billion people watched the channel's coverage of the first Gulf war, CNN's 4,000 employees in 33 countries are facing an uncertain future.