Betsy Fischer, the executive producer of Meet The Press, said she doesn't mind talking about ratings either: "Ratings are the measurement we're kind of stuck with. So, I accept that. But I don't see them as the be all and end all of public affairs television."

For the record, here is what's happening in the ratings battle between the two: As of April 5, This Week narrowed the gap until there was only about a 200,000 viewer difference -- 3.34 million for Meet the Press to 3.14 million for This Week. The ABC News show has cut the gap by 480,000 viewers in the last year. That's a 12 percent gain year to year vs. a 4 percent decline for NBC's Meet the Press.

On April 12, though, the see-saw went the other way with This Week falling 360,000 viewers behind Meet The Press. While that's a relatively narrow lead and reflects a strong surge by This Week, understand that no one -- even the folks at ABC News -- is predicting that This Week is going to unseat Meet The Press as the top dog on Sunday mornings -- a post it has held for a remarkable 61 straight quarters.

But there is a much more exciting Sunday morning vista to be seen when you look at that two-horse race within the context of all the major programs. King, for example, has brought a hard-nosed toughness and energy to CNN, particularly with his commitment to getting out of Washington and into the country each week. With four hours, he's getting the first and last words -- and the pace of the show never lets it feel long.

Last week, I was critical of NBC's David Gregory for what I saw as a lack of energy and passion on Meet the Press on April 12. That could be a fatal flaw given that energy and passion were two of the hallmarks of the late Tim Russert.

But Gregory bounced back last Sunday practically coming out of his seat as he pressed Lawrence Summers, White House Economic Council director, on what the administration was going to do for the people on Main Street now that it has bailed out Wall Street with billions upon billions. And Gregory got some news for his efforts: Summers saying the president was going to back efforts to stop banks from gouging their credit card customers.

Speaking only for his own show, Stephanopoulos explained its intensity and sense of engagement in part as a reaction to the extraordinary times in which the nation now finds itself.

"I think it's the combination of a historic campaign and a brand-new president for starters," he said. "Transitions are always exciting, but here it's expecially exciting because of the barriers that have been broken. And then, on top of that, there's the scale of the challenges that the new administration and the Congress are addressing. We just haven't seen anything like this in our lifetime."

How could serious journalists not try to perform at the top of their games when faced with covering the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression and two wars with American soldiers still in harm's way, Stephanopoulos suggests.

"The combination of a once in a century -- at the worst, half-century -- economic crisis combined with two wars where American troops are engaged on the groud -- one unwinding, we hope, while one intensifies -- is something we haven't seen. ... Even Roosevelt when he came in to confront the Depression didn't have to deal with two wars."

I haven't mentioned Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation and Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday but both hosts and their shows are must-viewing for me every week, and they have turned in consistently solid work in the weeks while I have been developing this piece.

Forget the question mark in the headline. What other era of Sunday morning public affairs programming could possible compare?

Maybe the late 1960s and early 1970s with all the cultural tumult. But the range of panelists, guests and conversation was so much narrower then, with primarily white men as on-camera experts.

No thanks. It's hard to see from inside the era, but what I see on Sunday mornings today is a golden era of public affairs journalism -- even as so much of the rest of the press comes undone.