Something tells me new CNN boss Jonathan Klein is not going to be the competitive genius Fox News has reason to fear. While no one can argue the current “Crossfire” formula was a monster hit — a show that was once unique is now overshadowed by all its copies — Klein seems to be suggesting his fight against feisty Fox is going to be made by dropping the “head-butting” shows, making CNN a pure “news” channel. But I’d say Klein is trying to impress the liberal media elite, not the general public. He’s trying to suggest CNN is marching closer in concept to a 24-hour Jim Lehrer NewsHour channel, which would have to make Fox want to hold a secret three-hour meeting with the sole agenda item of laughing themselves silly. In reality, CNN is then not an “objective” news channel, but a traditional liberal pretending-we’re-objective news channel.

Wouldn’t you think that one way to go at the Fox lead would be to try to poach the natural Fox audience and offer a better balance, with more conservative voices? Instead, CNN is taking “Crossfire” and “The Capital Gang” off the air, two rare places where conservatives would feel a reason to see their favorites mix it up on CNN. By the same token, this was in a sense what went wrong with “Crossfire.” Conservatives neither felt Tucker Carlson was exactly Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, and then couldn’t for one minute watch Bill Clinton’s harshest paid liars hold up the other end of the table.

Even if you’re a lefty and you think CNN or MSNBC reaching out for conservatives is a terrible goal, CNN can no longer pretend that when news breaks out, the cable-news junkies will think “CNN” as the first destination. It’s a competitive world out there now. Liberals often think people like Fox for their “head-butting” (Hannity, O’Reilly) and don’t see Fox as a place to get hard news. That would be wrong. It’s precisely because many viewers have seen the “news” filtered by Aaron Brown (or the likes of Keith Olbermann on MSNBC) that they feel Fox News is more fair and balanced (while, yes, liberals, less likely to trash the country they love).