As Westwood One breaks out the trumpets to hail Bill O'Reilly as the
              next big thing in talk radio, the most prominent industry publication is asking
              whether one of the last big things, Laura Schlessinger, is fading away.

              Talkers magazine estimates that Schlessinger still has
              more than 10 million listeners a week, making her second
              only to Rush Limbaugh, whose weekly audience
              Talkers pegs at 15 million-plus.

              But Talkers managing editor Kevin Casey also notes that Schlessinger
              has lost "several million listeners" in the last two years as she has been dropped by
              stations that include WABC here and WTIC in Hartford. She has also been moved from
              day to night hours in cities like Seattle and Boston.

              In the early '90s, Schlessinger was almost as hot as Rush, and WABC gave her an
              O'Reilly-like fanfare when she started.

              But program director Phil Boyce says says she never caught on in New York like the
              station hoped. For starters, she never beat Dr. Joy Browne on rival WOR.

              Schlessinger built a large audience in places where her sharp-tongued lectures were
              perhaps more of a novelty. But now, Talkers suggests, some programmers see
              her moving away from the minidramas of relationship and life advice, some of it
              exasperated and some of it cordial, toward lectures on morality with a heavy dose of
              conservative politics.

              Over that same time she has also found herself embroiled in a very public argument
              with the gay community after she called homosexuality "a biological mistake."

              While radio hosts from Limbaugh to Howard Stern and Don Imus have at
              times thrived on controversy, this one had a nasty edge. Schlessinger was widely
              portrayed as arrogant and pressure from gay organizations caused dozens of
              advertisers to leave her show.

              That pressure also didn't help when she launched a syndicated TV show, which
              quickly went down in flames. Talkers notes that almost every radio host in the country
              would still like to have her audience numbers — but that they're moving in the wrong direction.

              The rest of the Talkers survey shows Stern third with more than eight million listeners
              a week, followed by Browne, Michael Savage and the fast-rising Sean Hannity
              with more than five million.

              Art Bell, Jim Bohannon and Imus are estimated to have more than 4.5 million,
              while other New York personalities on the list include the Dolans with more than 2.5
              million, Matt Drudge with more than 1.25 million and Opie and Anthony with more
              than one million.