You think that one's a joke, try the Bloomberg ticker. Not only does it spell out the company names but there's no pre- and post-market data. For a channel that thinks its so stock-market savvy this is ridiculous. The only good thing about Bloomberg is looking at Suzy Assaad.
The CNBC ticker is useful in the premarket while your computer is botting up, to see which nasdaq stocks are getting hit on gaps. That's where it ends IMHO.