Fox Business to Air Imus, Ditch Business?

NEW YORK (TheStreet) --News Corp.'s(NWSA) Fox Business cable network is reportedly in talks with Don Imus to simulcast the shock jock's radio show during the prime business-news hours of 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern Time.

The initial report, published by the Los Angeles Times Monday night, has led to speculation among the chattering classes that Fox is perhaps on the way to ditching its experiment in all-business TV less than two years after the channel's launch, to much fanfare, in October 2007.

Henry Blodgett, for one, speculated as much on his Silicon Alley Insider Web site Tuesday, arguing that Fox Business's desire to reach a "mainstream" business audience has badly misfired, since CNBC alone has been more than enough to fill viewer demand for such programming.

Publicly available ratings, via Nielsen Media Research, do not exist for Fox Business, but the L.A. Times noted that the channel reaches about 50 million households, about half as many as CNBC (which is owned by NBC -- which, in turn, is owned by General Electric(GE)).

Imus would replace two Fox Business programs, "Fox Business Morning" and "Money for Breakfast."

-- Written by Scott Eden in New York