Going up weekday nights against Anderson Cooper and Bill O′Reilly at 8 p.m. may sound like cable news suicide. But per an LA Times profile piece by Alana Semuels, MSNBC host Ed Schultz is making it work:

This year through early February, Schultz’s nightly The ED Show viewership has averaged 608,000, a 60% increase from his ratings during the same period in 2010, according to Nielsen. He’s surpassed Cooper, though he has more than a million fewer viewers than O’Reilly.

In response to critics who accuse Schultz of deceitfully switching from a Conservative to Liberal POV, he tells Semuels it’s genuine. He says a large spark for the transformation came from a most unusual first date with his now-wife and afternoon radio show producer, Wendy. She took him to a homeless shelter.

Another mark of Schultz’s growing success? His fans like to refer to themselves as “Ed Heads.” To read the LAT article, click here.