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.