The NYT on why CNN president Jonathan Klein would like to see each viewer watch 30 seconds more of his station each month over the next 12 months.

An excerpt:

Lest there be any doubt that those six minutes are crucial, consider the following: the typical viewer who tunes in to Fox News's prime-time lineup - including the programs of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity - watches for an average of 26 minutes before switching channels, according to CNN's internal research. On average, viewers tune out CNN's prime-time hosts - including Mr. Brown, Mr. King and Paula Zahn - after just 19 minutes.

That gap in average viewing time has had a profound impact on CNN's ratings: thus far this season, its average audience between 7 and 11 p.m. (775,000) is far less than Fox's during the same time period (two million) , according to Nielsen Media Research. (As recently as four years ago, CNN was drawing more viewers than Fox News at night.)

Meeting Mr. Klein's goal would have a tangible impact on the network's bottom line - a former executive at another network estimated that those extra six minutes of viewing time could add more than $10 million to CNN's annual advertising revenue, which, according to TNS Media Intelligence, was nearly $440 million. To do so, Mr. Klein will have to somehow locate a holy grail that has thus far eluded his immediate predecessors.

He is the fifth person to head CNN's domestic operations in just the last four years, and each of his predecessors is believed to have been undone, at least in part, by a failure to do better in the ratings against the seemingly unstoppable Fox juggernaut.