CNN hired Erick Erickson a few years back to add a hardcore conservative Republican to its roster. The Tea Party redstate.com founder adds some Right-wing swagger to the otherwise boring moderate CNN News team. Erickson enjoys a much greater presence that FOX NEWS adding nasty old liberal Bob Beckel to a discussion group with 4 hard core conservatives. But FOX NEWS can say they have “a” liberal! MSNBC hired Right-winger SE Culp as a foil against 3 liberals in a similar discussion talk show. Though MSNBC really does not need such credentials as conservative Republican Joe Scarborough has own show for 3 hours every weekday morning.
BTW, looking up the stats I found that FOX NEWS has a larger audience than all the other cable news channels combined – and the oldest – and that Rachel Maddow has the largest audience at MSNBC.