Is Anyone Interested in Imus v. Scarborough?

It may not reach the opera buffa—or is it opera buffoon?—levels of Bill O'Reilly v. Keith Olbermann, but some people want to see Fox Business Network's Don Imus and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough as the undercard in the never-ending feud between NBC News and Fox News.

At least someone at the New York Post's Page Six wants to see it. The Post, which like Fox Business Network is owned by News Corp. (we thought we'd point that out since Page Six didn't), has an interesting item headlined "Imus Rattling MSNBC Nerves."

According to a Page Six source—it's unclear if the source is from MSNBC, Fox Business Network, Scarborough's show, Imus', or that classic "one wag"—"Those higher up at MSNBC are unnerved by Imus' move to Fox Business Network and fear his show could push Scarborough down. They're putting a lot of pressure on Joe to keep the ratings up. To make things worse, there are multiple scores to be settled."

Page Six goes on to report that Imus' show has averaged 148,000 viewers a day since its debut 10 days ago; Morning Joe gets 357,000, so if half the viewers "rattle" Scarborough, imagine what would happen if 300,000 people tuned in to watch Imus?

Even the participants don't seem to care for this drummed-up pseudo feud: the Post couldn't get an FBN or Imus rep to talk, and, far from sounding "rattled," another unnamed source (this one described as "close to Scarborough") told Page Six, "Imus is not even on our radar."

It might have less frisson than taking on MSNBC, but the network that might actually feel "unnerved" by Imus on FBN is CNBC, according to the New York Daily News' David Hinckley and Cristina Kinon. (If you're really so invested in intra-network feuding, CNBC is a fine representative of GE's NBC Universal for Fox to kick around until, you know, Rupert Murdoch owns both networks.)

According to the News, FBN is beating CNBC by a few thousand viewers during the Imus show. (Baby steps!) But Imus is a hit by FBN standards: According to Broadcasting & Cable's Alex Weprin, Imus in the Morning's FBN debut was a 1,000 percent improvement ratings-wise over the network's previous show at that hour, Money for Breakfast.