Data from the web tracking site Alexa shows that Drudge had more than 440 million page views in the last month while Breitbart had nearly 63 million. A June report from SimilarWeb.com showed Drudge had some 1.2 billion page views in April, when Breitbart had nearly 118 million.

As The New York Times Magazine reported over the weekend, Breitbart has suffered a loss of advertisers because of a campaign by the liberal activist group Sleeping Giants.

Given Drudge’s size and ability to drive clicks, picking a fight with it does not seem like the wisest course. “In order to be really influential with Breitbart, you have to have a cohesive conservative media,” Charles Sykes, the longtime conservative radio host who became a leading anti-Trump voice last year, told me over the weekend. “If other outlets don’t pick their stuff up, it doesn’t have the same resonance,” Mr. Sykes said. “He needs talk radio, Drudge, Fox News, to act as megaphones.”

Breitbart did go to war with Fox News last year, attacking when it thought Fox hosts — like Megyn Kelly — were being too hard on Mr. Trump. It lived to tell about it — and then some.

If Mr. Bannon does move forward with a rival to Fox News, he will face the herculean task required to get a new channel onto cable systems, especially as people increasingly give up cable for online streaming services. If he were to acquire an existing channel, he would still have to persuade cable operators to carry it as Breitbart TV.

Mr. Bannon could team up with smaller competitors on cable, Newsmax or One America News Network. However, when I reached the head of Newsmax, Chris Ruddy, on Sunday, he said. “While I respect Stephen Bannon as being a voice for the conservative movement, I don’t think he represents it, and Newsmax has always had a policy and an approach of being a big tent.” Therefore, Mr. Ruddy said, “It wouldn’t really be a good fit for us.”

Then again, on the CNN program “Reliable Sources” on Sunday, Mr. Bannon’s biographer, Joshua Green of Bloomberg News, noted, “Bannon has always said that ‘TV is not where it’s at,’” noting that “the rising generation of populist conservatives were more web-focused.”