When several hundred media industry worthies gathered at the Waldorf-Astoria for the annual Future of Business Media conference, they could have been forgiven for wondering: Is there much of a future for traditional business media?

The mood was fairly tense, because the attendees were keenly aware of the seismic changes rocking the media industry: The Internet's inexorable grab of readers and advertisers; News Corp.'s takeover of Dow Jones; and Thomson's acquisition of Reuters.

Canvassing the room—and what a room, with ContentNext Media founder Rafat Ali, PaidContent.org managing editor Staci D. Kramer, AlleyInsider.com managing editor Peter Kafka, Dealbreaker.com editor John Carney, New York Times reporter Brian Stelter, BusinessWeek.com's products director Charles DuBow, WatchMojo.com president Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, and NBC Universal vice president for digital media Sab Kanaujia—produced this consensus:

The industry is in big trouble unless it can get a handle on how to transmit business news, in all formats, over the web.

At lunch, Neil Cavuto of Fox Business News discussed how the new cable channel intends to compete with CNBC by targeting "Main Street."

"I don't believe that business news has to appeal only to the pedigreed few," Cavuto said, adding that if viewers want to know "the price of tin in Malaysia," they can go to CNBC.

"We're not going to do business news the way it was presented 20 years ago," Cavuto said, "we're going to do business news the way it should be presented now."

A few hours later, Mark Hoffman of CNBC addressed his new rival.

"Fox Business News deserves a lot of credit," Hoffman said. "It's very difficult to launch a new network."

Hoffman said that it is too early to asses FBN's performance, but we'll get a clearer sense in 6 to 12 months.

But he wasted no time in taking the "Main Street" strategy head on. "We're not interested in everybody," Hoffman said. "We're interested in the 60 percent of [Americans] who own a stock, bond or fund."

"We're for any 'street' where people are interested in making money," Hoffman said.

by Sam Gustin