Bill O’Reilly just got some more bad news (pdf). His hairline isn’t the only thing that’s receding. The February ratings show that he has the slowest growing program (11%) of all the cable news primetime programs in the 25-54 demographic. And he is clearly bringing down the Fox network because the same is true for their whole primetime block. This despite the fact that Greta Van Susteren had the 2nd highest growth (49%) after Keith Olbermann’s Countdown (61%).

It’s revealing to look at the trend over the past year. The chart below shows the Factor’s percent growth/loss year over year for each of the last five ratings periods. And just for fun, let’s throw in a comparison to Countdown for the same stretch.

It can’t be making O’Reilly very comfortable knowing that four of the past five sweeps he has been losing viewers while Keith has been packing them in.

Fox itself must be feeling a little queasy. In the past few weeks they have been making some pretty desperate programming moves. Starting with the dorm room bull sessions of “Red Eye”, Fox takes a stab at attracting an audience that has yet to discover the joys of Depends. Then this past weekend they broadcast “Reel Politics,” a supposedly humorous look at Hollywood, cementing their reputation as purveyors of comedy (If they think Hollywood would run Washington into the ground, just wait till you see what politicians would do to Tinseltown). Also in that vein was their chronicle of Internet life, “It’s Out There,” a program aiming for the modernity of the 21st century with art direction from “My Favorite Martian.” At least they staffed it with a couple of babes from their sinking O’Reilly franchise, psuedo-Democrat Kirsten Powers and the noxious Michelle Malkin. Too bad neither of them could muster up the charisma of a banana slug. But the real programming genius was the embarrassingly cheesy, laugh track challenged “1/2 Hour News Hour.” If they had not told me in the title that the program is a half hour long I might have been confused. But in fact, it only seems like an hour.

This new direction for Fox must be roiling the Comedy Central nervous system. If they don’t act precipitously, they may find their territory invaded and occupied by the network that helped Bush to do the same thing to Iraq. I would advise CC to respond by hitting Fox hard where they are most vulnerable – right in the journalism. The obvious move would be to immediately launch an evening newscast. That would be a frontal assualt that Fox would neither expect nor be able to counter. Because even Comedy Central has more experience in news than Fox.