Beck Tumbles, Baier Rises:In January See Top 30 Cable News Shows

In a way, January's cable news ratings are no surprise: Fox News overwhelmed the competition, and MSNBC beat CNN. But there were some interesting tidbits to be found in the end-of-the-month rankings. For starters, Glenn Beck's spot on the list slid down for the second time in three months. Beck used to be assured the #3 slot. But in November, he was pushed to fourth, and in January, he fell further to #5, behind "Fox Report With Shepard Smith." Moreover, "Special Report With Bret Baier" seems to have secured the #2 spot, which used to belong to Sean Hannity.

The result of the Al Jazeera English blackout in the United States has been a surge in traffic to the media outlet's website, where footage can be seen streaming live. The last 24 hours have seen a two-and-a-half thousand percent increase in web traffic, Tony Burman, head of North American strategies for Al Jazeera English, told HuffPost. Sixty percent of that traffic, he said, has come from the United States.

The middle class, the poor, mostly the young, but also the old, were mad as hell and weren't going to take it anymore, and they took to the streets, to cyberspace, and let loose, partly inspired by Tunisia's own toppling of a dictator, and partly reacting to decades of accumulated grievances.