Wasn&rsquo;t it inevitable that Don Imus would wind up on Fox?</p><p>Today is the day &ldquo;Imus in the Morning&rdquo; signs on at FBN, also known as the Fox Business Network. (For those who are hearing those three words together for the first time, it&rsquo;s probably on your digital cable lineup.) He airs from 5-8 a.m. weekdays.</p><p>Last week, the I-man and his crew, including newsreader Charles McCord and producer/lightning rod Bernard McGuirk, moved into new studios at the News Corp. building that overlooks Sixth Avenue. It is one block south of and kitty-corner from 30 Rockefeller Center, so Imus could conceivably go to a corner window and give a one-finger salute to Keith Olbermann.</p><p>Two and a half years ago the management of NBC either cravenly or finally, depending on your viewpoint, gave in to mounting outrage over Imus&rsquo; comments about Rutgers&rsquo; women basketball players and ousted the crotchety radio host from his long-running MSNBC program. </p><p>Even before he could be given the bum&rsquo;s rush, soon-to-be-ex-colleagues were speaking out against him. &ldquo;Today&rdquo; show weatherman Al Roker called for his firing. &ldquo;NBC Nightly News&rdquo; aired a highly critical story that Imus, after he saw it, called &ldquo;disgraceful.&rdquo;</p><p>Olbermann, too, piled on with unsympathetic pieces on &ldquo;Countdown,&rdquo; suggesting that the pressure to can Imus was mostly coming from inside the building.</p><p> In a radio interview Olbermann went further, saying that McGuirk &mdash; who uttered the racial slur on the infamous April 4, 2007, broadcast, just before Imus chimed in with his own &mdash; was &ldquo;a vile person who has done vile things on the air.&rdquo;</p><p>Meanwhile, Fox News Channel was providing safe haven to those who felt Imus was getting railroaded. &ldquo;Hannity & Colmes&rdquo; invited McGuirk to spar with Al Sharpton. </p><p>&ldquo;You terrorized these spineless, thumb-sucking executives into making a bad decision,&rdquo; McGuirk snarled at Sharpton, accusing the reverend of leading the anti-Imus campaign &ldquo;so you could get back in the papers because you&rsquo;re being overshadowed by Barack Obama.&rdquo; </p><p>On another Fox program, pundit Jim Pinkerton asserted that Sharpton&rsquo;s misdeeds in the past were &ldquo;much worse&rdquo; than those of Imus.</p><p>Now that the I-man is at the media outlet most diametrically opposed to MSNBC, it is fair to ask, not so much <em>if</em> he will go after MSNBC, but what choice insults he has been saving up for this moment.</p><p>&ldquo;Are there some people who, if I was given an opportunity to get even with them, would I? Of course,&rdquo; Imus told David Bauder of The Associated Press earlier this year. </p><p>He probably will steer clear of his successor on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough. The former Florida congressman hosts &ldquo;Morning Joe,&rdquo; probably the most Imus-like TV show on the air right now, with its blend of political talk, author interviews and hostly crankiness. </p><p>Since December 2007, when WABC put Imus on the air (because he was also dumped by his radio flagship, WFAN), &ldquo;Imus in the Morning&rdquo; has been a Top 10-rated show in the New York market.</p><p> But the show&rsquo;s visibility is nowhere near what it was. The Omaha-based satellite channel RFD-TV had been simulcasting the show, but its distribution is a fraction of Fox Business, which is in 50 million homes. Once Fox got interested, RFD let Imus out of his contract without a fight.</p><p>&ldquo;We are looking at this as one of the great treats of the century,&rdquo; said Kevin Magee, the executive vice president who oversees FBN. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got a guy coming in with a built-in audience, which we believe is completely compatible with what we&rsquo;re looking for.&rdquo;