Continuing a pattern that goes back more than a year, Fox News is again underperforming its peers. The latest Nielsen data comparing the first quarter of 2007 with the same period of 2006 shows Fox growing at the slowest rate of any of the cable news nets.

This comes at a time when much of the Cable news community was obsessed with the death of Anna Nicole Smith. The concentration of reports on overtly tabloid subjects such as Smith is often justified by the media as providing the audience with what it wants. Wolf Blitzer told an exasperated Jack Cafferty on air that…

“I know a lot of people are complaining about [the Smith coverage]. But a lot of people are also watching.”

Bill O’Reilly, a creation of tabloid media himself, ironically mused…

“I’m looking at her and seeing a media creation.”

That wasn’t enough to prevent him and Fox from airing by far the most coverage of all things Smith. The Project for Excellence in Journalism has the details:

“The Fox News Channel spent about 400 minutes or 32% of its airtime, on this case. This was 50% higher than MSNBC which devoted 21% of its airtime to the story and more than double CNN’s coverage of 14%.”

Fox’s Smith habit even exceeded it’s coverage of that little distraction over in Iraq by 2 to 1. That’s right, for every minute Fox spent covering the war in Iraq, the soldiers, their families, the political skirmishes, etc., Fox spent two minutes probing the Smith affair. But if the public is clamoring for more Anna Nicole, it isn’t reflected in the ratings, since every other network devoted less time to Smith but grew more. One could make the argument that the public is actually thirsting for more relevant content that has a true impact on their lives.

Taking a look at Fox’s top personality reveals the same patterns as for the network as a whole. While still drawing far more viewers than his competition, O’Reilly is also still growing far slower.

But O’Reilly’s troubles extend beyond his competition. Although his gains are far below those of his arch nemesis, Keith Olbermann, they are also lower than his prime time colleagues on Fox, Hannity and Van Susteren. And the pressure seems to be getting to him. In the following clip, he exhibits the unrestrained rage of man who has totally lost control of his senses. Even his buddy Geraldo knows a meltdown when he sees one and tells O’Reilly not to, “obscure a tragedy to make a cheap political point.” But, of course, that’s typical O’Reilly.