"Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that FBN averaged 8,000 viewers during daytime programming and 20,000 viewers in primetime in the first three weeks of July. That's a little better than the numbers reported at the start of the year, when the channel was reaching 6,000 viewers during the day and 15,000 in the evening. But at that rate of growth, it will be another 3,588 weeks, or 69 years, before FBN matches CNBC's daytime audience of 284,000. By then, Murdoch will be 146 years old, and on his seventh wife, if current trends hold (and assuming no growth in CNBC's numbers)." [Portfolio]

Though the Fox Business Network has seen a "modest improvement" in its ratings since the channel launched in October — up from an average of 6,000 daytime viewers to 8,000 — it's not exactly a true competitor to CNBC yet. So what makes another upstart think it can take on the business TV king? Chutzpah, money, and a leap of faith. Thomson Reuters appears to have all three.

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Well, this is one way of getting people to tune in to Fox Business. But it's not like Neil Cavuto & Co. ever pretended to play coy. [OCN]

There's a rumor going around that London-import Shahnaz Hussain, who until recently worked at the Fox Business Network, was axed from the network after complaining about being sexually and racially harassed.

So the story goes, Scott Bleier, the network's business analyst and contributor, allegedly made inappropriate comments/advances toward Hussain, which she complained about to HR and Fox's legal head, Diane Brandi, who "did nothing." A few days later, operations SVP Brian Jones showed her the door.

Other details include colleagues being told not to associate with Hussain, having their email and BlackBerrys rummaged through, and being told "to degrade her performance" and "to lie and vilify" her. FoxBusiness.com managing editor Ray Hennessey, FBN's Brian Jones, and FNC programming VP Kevin Magee spoke with Hussain's peers in recent weeks, the story goes, and told them not to have any contact with Hussain, inside or outside work.

Hussain is said to have retained an attorney for the matter, though we've also heard she's currently without counsel.

Oh, but then there's one other rumor going around: That Hussain was let go from FBN because she's simply a terrible on-air reporter, and none of those other conspiracy theories are true.

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Here's how the Fox Business Network maintains its commitment to relevancy: "FOX Business Network will host a televised debate between two contenders for the Libertarian presidential nomination, Mike Gravel and Wayne Allyn Root, on May 16 (Friday), at 8:10 am (eastern time). There will be a 10-minute session which ends at 8:20; then there will be a second session, also 10-minutes, that starts at 8:40.

"Also, Reason Magazine hosts a 3-person debate on May 20 in Washington, DC, at 4 pm eastern time. That debate will not be televised, but will include Gravel, Root, and Bob Barr." [BAN] [Photo: bluntzilla]

The Fox Business Network is making changes to its programming, which will hopefully attract new viewers and not scare off the 3,000 people who do watch. [NYT]

Patrick Byrne, chief of "all about the O" Overstock.com, hit up the Fox Business Network to 1) defend against never having an entirely profitable year; and 2) to air out his conspiracy theory that CNBC has it out for him.

Byrne: "I happen to know for a fact there is a fax machine in the CNBC offices where every morning hedge funds send in the instructions. The journalists sit around and take their instructions."

Responded FBN anchor Liz Claman and former CNBC-er: "I used to work at CNBC and I never saw the fax machine."

Byrne: "I have a good source on that."

Uh huh. Clip below (RedLasso, maybe buggy).

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CABLE SNOOZE Former White House spokesman and current Fox News host Tony Snow is jumping to CNN … Fox Business Network won't release Nielsen data given the ratings agency's "recent accuracy issues … especially given the margin of error on several of their digital measurements. Our number one priority is accountability for advertisers." … Alan Colmes reads his hate mail … Why doesn't Chris Matthews let guests finish their sentences? …

Though an irate Fortune chief Andy Serwer called us last week to demand we retract our claim that his magazine was about to deliver a blowjobby piece on CNBC, the current issue's Jessi Hempel article on the network does little to counter our report. Fortune is in love with CNBC!

To be perfectly fair, many of Fortune's bullet points are on target: The launch of Rupert Murdoch's Fox Business Network hasn't been much of an attack at all; ratings are, generally, up; income streams are fattening.

But the fawning over CNBC charge Mark Hoffman, that we imagined Hempel would deliver, is clearly there: "Mark Hoffman has added edge and emotion to a network that was heavily criticized in the run-up to the tech bust for its rah-rah business take on the news." Adds Jim Cramer: "Mark is remarkable because he says, 'Tell me what you need.' And we get it." Just get on his leg and start humping already.

Then again, Hoffman has overseen profits skyrocket 36 percent since taking over in 2005, so maybe he is entirely crush-worthy. Or they got some awesome new informericals to play on Saturdays. Fortune even gives Fox Business props: "On Martin Luther King Day the network aired live as the international markets melted down; CNBC stuck to its policy of airing taped programming when the U.S. markets close. And on Good Friday, FBN had live coverage when Standard & Poor's released a ratings cut of Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) and Lehman (LEH, Fortune 500). Again, CNBC wasn't live."

Ugh! Distinguishing between bias and fact-based favoritism is HARD.

How to get Fortune magazine to pen a puff piece on you? Complain that they did the same for the competition.

The Time Inc. business title is said to be working on a softball story on CNBC, hitting in the April 14 issue. This comes after Fortune published, in October, a blowjobby piece on the just-launching Fox Business Network, penned by then-staffer Tim Arango.

When that article hit, Kevin Goldman (then the VP of CNBC publicity and a former Wall Street Journal reporter) fired off an angry three-page letter to Fortune's editors, we're told, complaining about the rival network receiving such gratuitous coverage just out of the gate and demanding "better treatment" for CNBC.

Now, it could be argued, Fortune is offering a make good: The GE finance network is set to receive its own lauding coverage in the magazine.

We're told Jessi Hempel is penning the piece and, according to cable industry sources she spoke with, promised the article will be "extremely positive." After all, relays a source, Hempel says she was "told to write a positive piece about CNBC" and has declared she's a fan of CNBC chief Mark Hoffman.

When asked about the situation, Fortune chief Andy Serwer responded in a statement: "This article is an in-depth snapshot of CNBC, the only one that has been written in the last 5 years, with the kind of reporting, fact-checking and honesty that readers have come to expect from Fortune."

This Fox Business Network ad appears in today's New York Times, which touts the new-ish cable network's accomplishments — a list that basically includes "not airing Jim Cramer's crazy." (Click image for larger version) [via TVN]

Comedian and red eye getter-outter Ben Stein made headlines this month thanks to his narration of the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a film about the censorship of scientists who believe Darwin's evolution theory might be bunk, and that intelligent design is a more feasible explanation for how humans, fish, and spiders came to be. Getting attention was helped along by him attending movie screenings (always head privately and not open to the press) and lobbying politicians to allow alternative theories to be taught in public school.

So now you're caught up on his brand of rational thought.

Now Stein, who has no money for you to win, is on the trail of the Fox Business Network's answer to Maria Bartiromo. Roger Ailes has his own fleet of money honeys and, although they're seen more in articles about FBN than on the channel's actual airwaves, Stein is, in the pages of Best Life, gaga for 'em. But where, Stein wonders, did all these lovely ladies come from?

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Rupert Murdoch lost his domain name infringement claim against Florida "businessman" (aren't they all?) Derek Hodges, who registered FoxBusinessNews.com on Feb. 8, 2007, the very day News Corp. announced the launch of the Fox Business Network. Hodges was able to prove he'd been operating a business under the name "Fox Business News" before Murdoch ever did. Nevermind that Hodges allegedly asked for $50,000 from News Corp. in exchange for the domain name, or that Hodges' profession is domain name squatter. Oh, sorry; he's a "domain name reseller."

So what, exactly, is online at Hodges' FoxBusinessNews.com? A website devoted to the fox fur business. Cute overload!

CNBC brass hasn't been too worried about the competition Rupert Murdoch launched on the airwaves; Fox Business Network's viewers are being measured in the single thousands. But the small screen isn't the last frontier — that would be the Internet, where FBN is trouncing its rival. Forgive us for placing much weight in web metrics, but comScore claims FoxBusiness.com racked up 1.01 million unique visitors in January, to CNBC.com's 998,000.

Henry Blodget's Silicon Alley Insider wants you to "consider, for a moment, how pathetic and worrisome this is for NBC U. CNBC has been around since the early 90s; FBN launched in August. FBN likely is getting help from News Corp.'s big sites, including Marketwatch, WSJ.com and maybe even MySpace. But CNBC has plenty of help, too, via a corporate structure that includes MSNBC.com (50-50 joint venture partner with Microsoft), which gives NBC News a massive presence on the Web." Which is all true, but News Corp. is also buying up traffic through ad partners like Google, paying a steep price per visitor. Is organic traffic more valuable than click-thru traffic? It could be argued.

Then again, neither site is a category leader in online business news: Finance units from Yahoo and AOL, and CNNMoney.com, all trounce the networks' sites.

With "talent" like this, how ever is Fox Business' ratings in the crapper? [Townhall]