Variety's Rick Kissell includes this jaw-dropping statistic in his latest ratings recap regarding the relative competitive standing of "The Jay Leno Show:"

"In part because of baseball making for an additional strong competitor at 10, 'Leno' last week placed sixth in 18-49 on Monday and Wednesday, fifth on Tuesday and tied for fourth on Thursday. Among the Big Three, though, the NBC show is competitive with rookie ABC dramas on both Tuesday and Wednesday."

For relative old-timers -- i.e. anyone who remembers when there were actually two guys named "Brandon" simultaneously running broadcast networks -- it's easy to still think of a four-network playing field and a separate (considerably smaller) cable universe. Yet the reality is that on any given night one cable network or another can surpass a broadcast network, and two or three in tandem can do so easily.

What "Leno" has done is hasten this process and level the playing field, making it more possible for a series like USA's "White Collar" to rival broadcast numbers -- both because USA is up and NBC is down.

So while it's tempting to look at those network rating grids and draw snap conclusions about who's "winning," the process -- and the competitive playing field -- has become far more complicated than that.

The New York Times didn't add much to the discussion with Bill Carter's piece on CNN's ratings struggles, leaving the Turner-owned network as the odd channel out with Fox News playing to conservatives and MSNBC courting liberals in primetime. (See, among countless other articles, my earlier post: "CNN: Victim of Ideology, or Its Own Shortcomings?", roughly a month ago.)

Still, there was one anonymous comment from a CNN correspondent that ought to send chills up your spine if you harbor any delusions about actual "news" -- as opposed to opinion-laced invective -- having a future on the cable-news channels. Although CNN President Jon Klein insisted that the channel would remain committed to its news brand, the unnamed correspondent "suggested that prime time might demand something more: 'It’s not sexy to be in the middle. Klein’s got to make it sexy.'"

Oy. So far, CNN has sought to achieve "sexy" with all kinds of gizmos and technological toys, as if holograms are the solution to its troubles. Based on that history, the thought of CNN actually pursuing "sexy" is as distasteful as the image of Lou Dobbs in a thong.

The truth is that CNN and the rest of the cable newsies enjoyed a ratings overdose during the campaign and have spent the months since trying to figure out how to keep that inflated high and the good times rolling. Yet with CNBC having already injected itself into the financial meltdown in an unseemly way and Fox News taking an active role in promoting the recent Tea Party protests, the last thing we need is more "sexy."

The problem is that CNN has always been a slave to news cycles -- a source people turn to when news is breaking -- whereas Fox has found a way to trump that dynamic with personalities, mirroring the schism between newsradio and talkradio. Klein sought to make this point in the Times article, but CNN has never fully articulated the fact that it's playing (or at least ought to be) a different game.

So what adjective is most sorely lacking in the cable space? For starters, "smarter" would be nice, inasmuch as there's a decided shortage of it -- and perhaps more so now with David Gregory having failed to distinguish himself since supplanting Tim Russert at the helm of NBC's "Meet the Press," which no longer sets the qualitative standard for political talk.

Still, given CNN's track record -- where the thinking has been that "giving dimension" to its news means taking that phrase literally by resorting to holograms -- that's almost certainly too much to ask for.