I continue to watch FNC every evening for Shep Smith‘s excellent reports from the Israeli-Lebanese borders. And I’m not the only one: Here’s what a regular TVNewser contributor wrote earlier this week…

“Shep Smith is once again being absolutely riveting in his reporting. If we thought Katrina was an aberration, we were wrong. His style couldn’t possibly be more different, but he’s once again calling up echoes of Peter Jennings. He appears to have an almost organic absorption of the issues involved and is giving, in my opinion, by far the most concise and fascinating coverage of who’s doing what to whom and why on a day-to-day basis– not blood and guts and bang-bang, but sort of play-by-play analysis.”

A second e-mailer adds: “Anderson Cooper usually gets all of the press but Shep has been very fair and his coverage while he has been in the Middle East shows he really knows what he is taking about.”

Since the crisis in the Middle East erupted on July 12, the ratings for Shep’s 7pm Fox Report have outperformed CNN and MSNBC combined. The program is averaging 488,000 demo and 1.6 million total viewers. Shep’s demo is up 46 percent vs. the same period in 2005. The full #’s are after the jump…

7-8PM (25-54)
FNC – 1,605,000 viewers (488,000)
CNN – 813,000 viewers (310,000)
MSNBC – 391,000 viewers (161,000)
HLN – 214,000 viewers (115,000)
CNBC – 122,000 viewers (46,000)