Kathleen Parker the “conservative” co-host of Parker Spitzer admitted to the New York Times that there is indeed tension on the set but denied rumors that she was considering leaving the show.

From the New York Times

In one sweeping move, the 8 p.m. political talk show “Parker Spitzer” could have turned around CNN’s flailing prime-time ratings, publicly rehabilitated the fallen New York governor Eliot Spitzer, and turned his co-host Kathleen Parker into a television star.

Instead, at the two-month mark, the ratings for CNN’s latest experiment are stagnant. The show has been troubled by backstage tensions that have spilled out in gossip columns and have given rise to speculation — and some wishful thinking among his supporters — that CNN could make Mr. Spitzer the sole host.

CNN executives and the co-hosts flatly ruled out that outcome in interviews last week. Disappointment with the ratings was evident, even as they emphasized that the show was just starting to get its footing.

“We’re creating something that I believe in. I have every confidence that it will be very successful,” said Mr. Spitzer, who resigned the governorship in 2008 after being ensnared in a prostitution scandal.

“Parker Spitzer” amounts to image rehabilitation for Mr. Spitzer, though it has not proved to be much of a platform yet. In its first seven weeks, “Parker Spitzer” averaged only 140,000 viewers ages 25 to 54, a drop of 2,000 from the seven weeks before it started, according to the Nielsen Company. “Countdown,” on at the same time on MSNBC, reaches twice as many people in that demographic, which cable news advertisers covet; “The O’Reilly Factor,” on Fox News, reaches five times as many.

But those two shows started in obscurity, with almost none of the scrutiny that “Parker Spitzer” has endured. Mr. Spitzer and Ms. Parker “launched into the most competitive time on TV, that’s just a fact,” said Bart Feder, a senior vice president at CNN. “That’s a heavy lift. They went into it knowing that. We went into it knowing that, which is why we take it one day at a time.”

In part, the show has been watched carefully because it represents Mr. Spitzer’s return to the public spotlight. But it is also because CNN is adrift, having shed a third of its audience in prime time the last five years.

Making matters even more delicate, Mr. Spitzer was paired with Ms. Parker over the summer by a CNN president, Jonathan Klein, who was dismissed weeks before the program’s Oct. 4 start date. The new executive in charge of CNN, Ken Jautz, is said to be supportive of the program. He declined an interview request.

Now, with Mr. Klein out of the picture, Mr. Spitzer and Ms. Parker, neither of whom had regularly hosted a show before, are learning how to do so in front of its viewers. Neither host was screen-tested before being hired, a fact that later raised eyebrows inside Time Warner, CNN’s parent company.

“It’s absolutely a work in progress,” said Ms. Parker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post, in an interview last week.

She denied any intent to leave “Parker Spitzer,” and said she recently signed a two-year lease in New York, having moved from Washington to tape the show. She has also cut back her print duties, to one column a week for the Washington Post Writers Group, from her previous output of two a week.

“Parker Spitzer” is intended to be a nightly news-based conversation about a mix of topics, with a mix of opinions. It pairs Mr. Spitzer, a liberal with a prosecutor’s bent, and Ms. Parker, who calls herself a rational conservative. “We wanted very much to bring a nonpartisan alternative to television viewers,” Ms. Parker said, a wink at the red- and blue-hued shows on Fox News and MSNBC.

The hosts and their guests have had smart, surprising debates about deficit reduction (in a recurring challenge to legislators called “Name Your Cuts”), overseas wars and airport security. But the show has been marred by tensions behind the scenes about the balance between the hosts, especially in recent weeks as the scales have tipped more in Mr. Spitzer’s favor, according to several CNN employees who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared losing their jobs if they spoke publicly.

The tensions spilled into public view last week when the Page Six gossip column in The New York Post said Ms. Parker had stormed off the set in early November. Asked about that claim, Ms. Parker said, “I don’t storm. I saunter.”

She acknowledged that there was some “editorial and political tension,” but cast it as a normal part of television production. “That’s how human beings are made,” she added.

Mr. Spitzer put it this way: “I’ve seen tension in my life — conflict, tension, acrimony — and I haven’t seen anything here that comes close to what I’ve seen.”

There is no doubt that Mr. Spitzer dominates the current iteration of the show, which has been heavy on political and financial news, playing to his strengths. Ms. Parker, in contrast, “can appear decidedly passive, almost meek,” wrote James Rainey, a Los Angeles Times media critic last week, in a column that proposed, “If Parker’s really mad enough to walk off the set, she should turn a little of that animus on her co-host. It would make for livelier discussions, and better TV.”

That’s what CNN is lacking is an edge.  Rather than try to fashion the show like the old Crossfire program with a  left-right debate Parker Spitzer is a pretty one-sided affair with the self proclaimed “rational conservative” Parker relegated to a role that is reminiscent of Alan Colmes when he was the liberal shill for Sean Hannity.

Being rational doesn’t mean you just roll over and play dead which is what Parker has been doing more often than not as the stronger and more persuasive Spitzer has taken over.

For CNN their attempt to create middle of the road programming continues to fall flat with viewers making them more irrelevant as each day passes.

Viewers want a point of view not a muddled middle mess.

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