For Fox Business Network and CNBC, the chase is on

By the time you read this, the Fox Business Network will be hours into its first day covering competition among businesses. But there may be no story as intense and interesting as the competition between the new network and its main rival, CNBC.

This fight for business viewers' hearts, minds, remote controls and wallets has certainly made both networks' programming executives circumspect. Fox has played sly, not announcing its programming concepts in order to avoid counterprogramming by CNBC. Key contributors for Fox have been announced, with Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto and David Asman and former NBC and CNBC correspondent Alexis Glick among the headliners.

Bite not really too bad

Most media and market observers focus on the bark coming from the commentators on CNBC and the Fox News Network, but the bite -- in terms of audience size -- is smaller than their influence suggests. "Your World With Neil Cavuto," a market wrap-up on the Fox News Channel, is already the highest-rated cable business show, averaging 521,000 viewing households per show over the past year. CNBC had an average of 272,000 during stock market trading hours. But this media metric is incomplete, as the Nielsen ratings don't reflect all the brokers peeking at their TV screens when they take their eyes off their computer or cell-phone screens.

Fox's launch-strategy secrecy is indicative of how high the stakes are, not just for parent company News Corp., but for the highly profitable CNBC and parent company General Electric as well. Riding the recent bull market, CNBC looks like a tech stock, with impending advertising commitments "up 23 percent to 25 percent," CNBC President Mark Hoffman said. Hoffman also reports that "last year was the biggest net profit year ever for CNBC."

Not surprisingly for a business channel enjoying record profit, Hoffman says that "we're unabashedly capitalistic and we don't apologize for that." Nor will he be sorry for the advantages CNBC enjoys going into today: near-national penetration of 92 million households, or about 82 percent of the country, while the Fox Business Network launches with an announced 30 million homes, or 27 percent. That's impressive in a medium with limited shelf space, but still well below CNBC.

Kevin Magee, executive vice president of the new venture, said that the plan is for "a robust, well-formed business news network." The experience he brings to the job includes time at CNBC and ABC.

Executives from the rival networks focused on four-word media mantras to sum up their approaches: "Money, success, markets and finance," says Fox's Magee. "Fast, accurate, actionable and unbiased," CNBC's Hoffman replies.

In a much-publicized move, News Corp. recently bought the Wall Street Journal. Most media mavens look at the potential for creating a global brand of business journalism by wedding the Journal with the Fox Business Network.

One small catch, though: The Journal is already married, to CNBC no less, with the bonds contractually lasting until 2012. "We're looking at it and seeing what we can do," Magee said. Meanwhile, Hoffman hopes for five more years on top of "10 really excellent years with the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones. We won't contend with that as an issue, as it's been very strong and mutually beneficial."

But it raises a question: If reporters and editors from the Journal have their credibility enhanced by appearing on CNBC, is the Fox enterprise going to find itself in the situation of grooming stars for its main rival? And if so, will CNBC downplay the Dow Jones connection?

When News Corporation's Rupert Murdoch was buying the Journal, critics said they feared that Murdoch's mostly conservative views might color the news columns. As for whether the Fox Business Network will have a partisan persona, the nature of the content may mitigate against it.

"This is about investment, as opposed to politics," said Mark Bergen, professor and chairman of marketing at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. "The finance community has a playing ground that is exchange-oriented, which is rational and has a set of rules. The market mechanism is faster than the broader social mechanism."

In other words, political arguments are often unproved. Financial ones have an objective balance sheet.

Which network to watch will be up to viewers. Whether to watch just one is another matter, with many key financial players cautious about relying on only one information source. "I like to diversify my information portfolio just as we advise people to diversify their investment portfolio," mused Art Rolnick, senior vice president and director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

"Cable financial news can create a cascading effect," said Ross Levin, president of the Edina-based financial planning firm Accredited Investors. "The consumer and the cable network can feed off each other in a kind of sick, symbiotic relationship."

This can distort markets, and make it "more likely to get herd effects," agrees the U's Bergen. "If I were an investor, I'd look for stories that have legs -- not overreacting to the day's volatility."

Still, be it from a journalistic, academic, financial planning or governmental perspective, most agree that the financial arena can benefit from Milton's "marketplace of ideas."Even if we got all of CNBC's viewers, it would be a failure if we didn't expand the pie," Fox's Magee said.

"Any information is useful, if used appropriately," agrees financial planner Levin, as does Bergen, who, true to his academic inquisitiveness, says, "More information is better."

The Fed's Rolnick offers another benefit from the advent of business networks: "It's helped us use language in a better way, at least for the market response."