BOSTON ---- The end may be in sight for Lou Dobbs on CNN, and it couldn't come too soon. There won't be much reason to cheer, however.

Compared to Fox News and MSNBC, CNN's ratings have fallen precipitously since last year's elections. But Dobbs' numbers hadn't fallen that much until the furor broke out in July over his unsavory pushing of the "birther" theory that President Barack Obama is not a native-born U.S. citizen. By September, his viewership was wallowing at about half of what it was last November. It is unclear whether he is being pulled down by CNN or by campaigns by Hispanic and progressive groups to get advertisers and CNN to "Drop Dobbs." In addition to their revulsion over the birther stories, they are protesting Dobbs' often-incorrect statements and his demonization of illegal immigrants.

Whichever, the advertising on his show now looks anemic, and media buyers report that his rates have been cut. Insiders I've spoken with off the record at CNN say Dobbs' bosses are debating whether he is still worth the headache. CNN/US President Jon Klein earlier publicly disavowed the birther stories. Dobbs, widely disliked by CNN colleagues for being abrasive, has sniped back on the air about what he can and cannot say.

A similar confrontation between Dobbs and former CNN/US President Rick Kaplan resulted in Dobbs quitting in 1999 to start an Internet venture. But when Kaplan left the network, Dobbs returned triumphantly in 2001.

Now, The New York Times has reported, Dobbs is talking with Fox News about moving to that network's spin-off channel, Fox Business. He had dinner with Fox News President Roger Ailes last month, the paper said. Fox declined to comment.

A Fox move would mean that Dobbs is not going away. More fundamentally, it would also underline how a trend in cable news toward being ever-more opinionated and partisan appears unstoppable. This is happening at a time that cable news is the only economically healthy and growing segment of the news media.

The polarization between Fox on the right and MSNBC on the left feeds ---- and is fed by ---- a stark political divide in the country. According to a 2008 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, for example, two-thirds of the viewers of Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" self-identified as conservative.

CNN has struggled to restrict opinion by emphasizing news and the personalities of prime-time anchors such as Anderson Cooper and Larry King. The strategy has had only limited success. More viewers turn on CNN for a quick news hit over the course of a day and for many big events. On most nights, however, its partisan competitors draw larger audiences.

Dobbs is the CNN exception. On the air, he is nonpartisan but expresses strong populist views as the self-proclaimed "Mr. Independent." According to the Pew poll, 38 percent of his audience last year identified themselves as conservative. Eighteen percent said they were liberal. He attracted conservatives to CNN, but Fox Business might be a more natural home for him.

After many years in which Dobbs and King largely carried CNN's prime-time audience, Dobbs came in fourth on that network behind King, Cooper and Campbell Brown last November with 1,238,000 viewers, according to Nielsen. He dropped to just 616,000 by September. At the same time, his repeat show on CNN's sister network, HLN, was recently canceled.

One of the letter-writing campaigns to "Drop Dobbs" is being run by a powerful coalition of national Latino groups such as National Council of La Raza and the League of United Latin American Citizens, plus the Southern Poverty Law Center and the liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America. Grass-roots organizations from 25 cities across the country are joined in another group, called BastaDobbs.com, meaning "no more Dobbs."

Both claim that Dobbs' almost nightly disparagement of illegal immigrants creates a climate in which discrimination against Latinos is acceptable, and hate crimes, while small in number, are growing, according to the FBI.

That Dobbs mixes his opinions with straight news on his show is particularly insidious. It makes his opinions seem objective when so often they are just flat wrong. It isn't true, as he reports, for example, that Mexican immigrants disproportionately commit crime or carry diseases, and want to reconquer the Southwest.

But as the stronger ratings for Fox News and MSNBC show, the public seems to prefer the opinion shows over objective news. Dobbs may still thrive.

Edward Schumacher-Matos writes for the Washington Post Writers Group. Comment online at nctimes.com or contact him at edward.schumachermatos@yahoo.com.