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.

As early as January, the newly merged Thomson Reuters plans an Internet-cable TV business programming play, supposedly taking on CNBC and Bloomberg.

Except that master plan has its skeptics who don't think it's going to work out quite so nicely:

Here's why: NBC U's (GE) CNBC achieved full distribution–95 million odd cable and satellite homes–in the early 90s in the go-go era of new cable channels. Now analog capacity on those systems is full, and the only way to get carriage for a new channel is if you have the leverage of, say, News Corp. (NWS). And even Rupert Murdoch's muscle has only been able to do so much for the newly launched Fox Business Network last year: It's been a struggle just to get the 32 million subscribers it does have — one reason that early ratings have been miniscule. Murdoch's not the only billionaire who has struggled to break a new business channel: Mayor Mike's Bloomberg TV, which has been soldiering on since 1994, has 45 million subscribers.

That said, Thomson Reuters could launch a linear channel on the Web, with possible carriage on digital systems, as well as AT&T's U-verse or Verizon's FiOS. The model here is ABC's World News Now, which is produced by a tiny staff in New York and carried on digital tiers of some cable systems, as well as the Web. Or, like Bloomberg TV, Thomson Reuters could launch it as a service to its professional subscribers.