October was the 10th anniversary of Fox News, and in that 10 years it has risen to the No. 1 cable news network, riding on the tagline "Fair and Balanced."

Yet Fox News is showing serious signs of aging, led by steep audience declines.

Fox News’s total audience fell 24 percent in the past year, to 1.3 million viewers from 1.7 million, and its key primetime audience, viewers ages 25-54, was down 7 percent in October on a year-to-year basis, to an average 363,000 viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research data.

In third quarter, Fox News suffered a 38 percent decline in 25-54s, to 409,000. In second quarter, that audience was down 22 percent and in first quarter it slid 28 percent. It is still No. 1 by a long shot.

Fox attributes the 2006 declines to a soft news year compared to 2005, which saw audiences shoot up during events like Hurricane Katrina, the Asian tsunami and the death of Pope John Paul II.

Bill Shine, senior vice president of programming at Fox News, tells Media Life: "The numbers that everybody goes by are year-to-year numbers, and 2005 was an incredible year for news compared to 2006."

But Fox's problems go deeper than that. If it was just the dearth of big stories this year, all the other cable networks would be down as well. Two were actually up in October.

CNN has also been down steeply this year in total viewers and 25-54s but not as much as Fox, and in October its 25-54 primetime audience was essentially flat at down 1 percent.

And both Headline News and MSNBC were actually up in that demo last month, by 18 percent and 19 percent.

Fox appears to be suffering from other ills, and one is a reluctance to tinker with what's worked over the past decade. It has done little to change its look and feel, and at a time when its competitors have been busy trying out new ideas and talents and freshening up their formats. That would certainly explain the notable growth of both MSNBC and Headline News.

But Fox News's bigger problem may well stem directly from the political turmoil facing the nation as it enters the voting booth for next week's midterm elections, say analysts.

As the network most identified with conservative America and in particular the Bush White House, Fox News is suffering the most from the disenchantment among conservatives over the war and the political scandals.

The news formula that worked for so long is now working against it, they say, as fewer of those disenchanted viewers bother to tune in to watch the news.

“What Fox did so brilliantly was assess both the political and cultural realities of the times when it came on, and then designed a service that perfectly fit a certain niche,” says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

“The problem with coming up with a perfect niche that is perfect for the time is that time and culture change. Potentially, you end up positioned with an identity that no longer reflects the reality of the times.”

Judy Daubenmier of News Hounds, a web site often critical of Fox News, agrees.

“Fox News has tied itself so closely to George Bush that when his approval ratings go down people don’t want to hear about him, so they don’t want to watch Fox News,” she says.

Jill Olmsted, associate professor of journalism at American University in Washington D.C., thinks viewers have grown tired of Fox’s adamantly pro-Bush rhetoric.

“This could be a backlash,” she says. “We don’t know what’s going to happen on Election Day, but indications are that people are tired of the partisanship and went to get on a more neutral, let's-get-along agenda.”