NEW YORK — Put outraged people on TV and audiences will watch. Just ask Headline News boss Ken Jautz.

In February 2005, Jautz, CNN Worldwide's executive vice president, began overhauling CNN's sister network, injecting prime time with loud opinion shows. First came legal talker Nancy Grace and then conservative radio host Glenn Beck.

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Glenn Beck the fastest growing cable news show for total viewers in 2006, Headline News boss Ken Jautz says.

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Three years later, the network is celebrating its makeover anniversary with bigger audiences, even as its hosts continue to rile critics and stir questions about the boundaries between opinion and news.

"It was a huge experiment and it was hugely successful," Jautz said in an interview. He said Headline News has 81 percent more viewers between 7 p.m. and midnight than it did before the format change, which also includes "Showbiz Tonight."

"Nancy Grace" was the fastest growing cable news show for total viewers in 2005, and "Glenn Beck" had that title in its launch year of 2006, Jautz said.

Last month, "Nancy Grace" had an average of 720,000 viewers at 8 p.m. and 429,000 for a 10 p.m. showing, according to Nielsen ratings provided by CNN. "Glenn Beck" had 341,000 viewers at 7 p.m. and 392,000 at 9 p.m.

The audiences are small compared to the heavyweight opinion and talk programs on CNN and Fox News, but Jautz said Headline News complements CNN's programming, bringing "more potential viewers into the overall CNN tent."

Cable news audiences, including viewers of opinion and talk shows, have grown in recent months, boosted by interest in the presidential campaign.

Last month, for the first time in six years, Atlanta-based CNN overtook Fox News during the 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. period with more viewers age 25 to 54, a group coveted by advertisers.

News Corp.'s Fox News retained its lead in total viewers, with an average of about 2.2 million on weeknights compared to CNN's 2 million.

For Headline News, which like CNN is part of Time Warner Inc., the shift to prime-time opinion shows produced in New York was a big change from its traditional cycle of news updates.

"Headline News began as the more efficient, purer form of the news," said Janet Murray, a Georgia Tech professor of digital media and director of a lab studying future television.

"CNN really made a shift here believing that they were not going to increase their audience share by doing a better job of informing and explaining," Murray said. "The move was clearly to compete with Fox in the category of strong entertainment personalities. It's really very different from a news function."

Fox News, which declined to comment for this story, remains a powerful force in prime-time opinion and talk shows.

In February, "The O'Reilly Factor" had an average weeknight audience of 2.7 million and "Hannity & Colmes" had about 1.9 million viewers.

CNN's "Larry King Live" had 1.3 million and "Lou Dobbs Tonight" averaged 1.2 million.

While Jautz notes that his shows have done well this year, Nancy Grace's legal program had the smallest growth among cable news shows in the competitive 8 p.m. slot last month. Compared to the year before, its total audience increased 6 percent.

In that time period, during a month of substantial political coverage, CNN was up 89 percent with various news programs and MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" grew 44 percent.

But in the hour-later slot, Glenn Beck's total audience grew 14 percent over 2007, the strongest showing at 9 p.m. The show edged out the 13 percent growth from Fox's "Hannity & Colmes" and MSNBC's "Live With Dan Abrams."

While Headline News has seen audiences grow, the overhauled format has its detractors.

Grace, a former Georgia prosecutor, has attracted audiences with strident comments, but has also drawn criticism that she goes too far, rushing to harmful public judgments.

In 2006, Grace grilled Melinda Duckett during a taped segment about the disappearance of her young son. Duckett shot and killed herself the next day. Police later named Duckett the prime suspect in the disappearance.

Duckett's family sued CNN and Grace, blaming her for causing emotional distress that led to the suicide. A request from CNN and Grace that a judge dismiss the lawsuit is pending. The toddler, Trenton, remains missing.

"I nicknamed her 'Nancy guilty-until-proven-guilty Grace,'" said Jimmy Schaeffler, a Carmel Group media analyst and a vocal Grace critic. He said he was especially upset by Grace's accusations involving the Duke lacrosse rape case.

"I don't care what her rating is, she doesn't deserve to be on a national programming platform, certainly not one on the level of Headline News and CNN," Schaeffler said.

Grace, asked about whether opinion shows belong on news networks, said "that is up to the public and their decision to tune in or not."

"I've felt the duty to fight crime in my own way," she said.

Grace, who recently gave birth to twins while experiencing serious medical problems, said she sees "the world through a different set of eyes now."

"Now when I cover these cases where people are searching for a child or a child has been abused, I feel it even more deeply," she said.

Beck has stirred up his own controversies, upsetting Hispanic groups, Arab-American organizations and the liberal Media Matters for America, which called his hiring a "desperate and misguided ploy for ratings without regard for the thousands of Americans Beck has offended."

Jautz said his hosts are passionate with their opinions, and "we liken them to the op-ed page of a newspaper."

"Glenn Beck is not a journalist. He is a talk show host," he said. "We emphasize that Nancy Grace is an ex-prosecutor. I think it's very important to be clear with the audience."