First-quarter Nielsen ratings are out, and everyone is talking about CNN's (continued) primetime ratings free-fall. While Fox News remains No. 1, MSNBC and CNN's sister network HLN are now regularly outperforming The Coop and his cohorts.

In today's New York Times, Bill Carter gives a run-down of CNN's sad state of affairs. According to Carter, Larry King not only had his worst quarter ever during the first three months of 2010, but is now threatened by View co-host-turned-primetime HLN talking head Joy Behar. Anderson Cooper isn't faring much better: CNN's silver fox saw his audience drop 42 percent in the first quarter and now finds himself occasionally losing to repeats of Olbermann and Maddow on MSNBC.

As you can see above, Fox News continues to be far and away the most highly watched news network in primetime. But MSNBC, which is also down in overall primetime viewers (but hasn't been losing them as quickly as CNN), is now in second place.