Fox Business Just Seven Decades From Victory

Rupert Murdoch is a patient man. But is he prepared to wait another 69 years to see his plans come to fruition?

That's how long it will take his new Fox Business Network to catch CNBC in the ratings on its present trajectory. 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). Good thing he's in excellent health.

See for yourself:

As you can see, there is a silver lining here: It should only take FBN 17 years to overtake CNBC in primetime. And while Fox Business won't take the daytime crown until 2077, it will be killing CNBC in primetime by then.

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Update, 6:53 p.m.: I replaced an earlier, completely nonsensical version of the chart depicting FBN's projected ratings growth with this slightly less nonsensical version.