Glenn Beck may not want you to know what a dismal failure he was when he ventured out from his perch on Headline News to replace Paula Zahn for a week on CNN. But here’s the bad news for Beck:

The bad news for the rest of us was that Beck was on CNN at all. And since his regular gig at HLN continued, he was on for 3 hours daily on CNN networks. What compelled the programmers at CNN to do such a thing is a mystery, but they got what they deserved.

Beck’s HLN program averaged 139,400 viewers in the 25-54 demo the week prior to his CNN stint. Moving to the much more widely viewed CNN, he was only able to increase his audience by 1.7%. Even worse, he under-performed the teetering Paula Zahn by over 23%. Zahn, it should be noted, is rumored to be on the way out because of her lackluster ratings.

What does that tell us about Beck, whose audience on HLN averaged a puny 82,000 demo viewers in the second quarter of 2007? Zahn for the same period averaged 191,000. And what does it tell us about CNN, who not only haven’t canceled this loser, but gave him even more air time to spew his brand of fact-free mental pollution?