CNBC might be kicking the life out of News Corp.'s own business network in the ratings, and the channel might be hemorrhaging money faster than Palin with PMS, but the FBN's website actually saw a relatively huge increase of unique visitors in the last month, and had the 21st largest unique users according to Nielsen's, which does Internet counting now, I guess.

Oh Jim Cramer, so angry at hedge funders for playing the market stupidly and picking bad stocks and giving wrong advice:

Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s ‘Mad Money’, told viewers yesterday that many hedge fund strategies have been dead wrong, such as the betting on a Chinese recovery after the Olympics, TheStreet.com, which Cramer co-founded, reports…

The result of hedge funds gone bad is forced selling, he said, and at around 2:45 p.m. each day, hedge funds begin preparing for the next day’s round of redemptions by liquidating their ill-conceived positions.

‘These funds are getting killed,’ he claimed.

The vociferous Cramer also blamed fund-to-fund managers for pressuring their underlying funds for immediate redemptions, forcing managers to think only for the short term.

Um, except hasn't Jim Cramer been so incredibly wrong about the banks and everything these past couple months that the only thing still keeping him on CNBC is his good ratings? Even Fox Business knows what a joke Cramer has become, and bought out time on CNBC to run anti-Cramer commercials.

Next time you want to pass the blame buck, Mr. Mad Money, it would behoove you to go back and watch your March tapes on Bear Stearns, where you announce the company was "not in trouble" literally days before this whole economy meltdown got a kick-start from the Big Bear.

Fox and NBC stand at the polar ends of the spectrum in other things besides politics. While Fox might lead in the ratings for news, CNBC —NBC's business channel— is the number one source of financial coverage, and has only been gaining in viewers since the Wall Street fiasco. Fox Business Network has had less success, and recently went over to the dark side of smear ads, like the one to your right that attacks CNBC's Mad Money host Jim Cramer for his poor investment tips, including the sunk Wachovia Bank.

But CNBC flacks are no slouches in the mud-slinging department either, as this counterstrike P.R. statement can attest:

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Exhausted with crapping on MSNBC, News Corp.'s attack dog megaphone Page Six goes after 30 Rock's biz network: 'THE top talents at CNBC are battling over a billboard. A network insider tells us Maria Bartiromo, Suze Orman and Donny Deutsch "all want their pictures on CNBC's billboard overlooking the West Side Highway, and there's always a lot of fighting and lobbying behind the scenes over it. They're like a bunch of prima donnas." A CNBC flack denied any rivalry and insisted all three have had their mugs featured on the board in the last year.'

This is funny, because:

"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]

So when Rupert Murdoch took over the Wall Street Journal and started the Fox Business Network, it seemed like cross-promotional love was in the air. After all, who better to pontificate on FBN than WSJ reporters under the thumb of RM?

Only one problem with this plan: CNBC has an exclusive deal with WSJ reporters through 2012. But we should put exclusive in quotes, because FBN has already figured out a way to get around that.

Kevin Magee, current FBN executive vice president and former CNBC employee announced yesterday that exclusive is kind of a loose term.

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