CNBC woes - am I alone in my anger?

R

rickf

Is it me, or is CNBC pandering to the masses and not the business world these days?

I don't get Bloomberg here in Arlington, VA yet, and am stuck with CNBC. But I'm getting to the point where I'd want to, because CNBC is really getting annoying as "background news" during the day. (Thank god I don't use it to trade by, right?)

While some of the anchors/reporters are intelligent and I like them, is anyone else around here thinking that since 2007 began, CNBC has become "Reality Television For Business"? At the very least, it's become more of the "Portfolio Challenge Channel" than anything else.

I place the blame squarely on the producers during the day, not the anchor/reporters.

Think about it:

- They hawk their Portfolio Challenge game incessantly in commercials. I thought they'd tone it down once the game began, but it's only gotten more pervasive.

- They tie many of their regular 'news' pieces into the Portfolio Challenge game.

- They pollute the NASDAQ ticker by replacing quotes with Portfolio Challenge advertisements every fifteen minutes during market hours. (If I was the NASDAQ, I'd be pissed at that!)

- They have tons of VERY annoying special-effects sounds for their charts and at set pieces during the day (ie, the zooming racecar sound played repeatedly during screen wipes during the 'Final Trade' period around 3:45ET)

- They've become too focussed on being a cheerleader for market motion than anything else. Things like the orange bar on the top of the screen to alert the DOW is "X points below record close" reeks of sensationalism, or "Breaking News" when the DOW hits a new high....if you're always going higher, ANY higher close is a new high, right? Yet they keep treating that as "Breaking".

- Rather than switch to CNBC Asia in the evenings, they run reality television shows that air the week earlier on NBC. If CNBC was a serious business channel, you'd think once "Fast Money" ended, they'd toss the feed to Asia for true 24-hour market coverage.

*growl*

Sorry for the rant, but it seems they're more concerned with heading off the upcoming Fox Business Channel than anything else, and it's just come to a point that I had to vent somewhere. From a business perspective, I can understand what CNBC needs to do in order to survive, but don't appreciate their sacrificing 'news' for 'sensationalism'.

*growls again*

Thanks for reading.
 
It's all about ratings. Parent company demands results. Higher ratings = more advertising dollars. They've recently acknowledged that their changes have resulted in higher ratings. Based on this, I doubt that you'll be seeing more info on business on this business channel .....

As for whether you're alone - not hardly. There's been several CNBC threads recently - few to none of the folks were too pleased ....
 
Monopoly position.
Pure and simple.
Much of media is like this.
We have a newsradio station in our area.
I complain about them a lot....to no avail, they don't have to listen: they're the only one.
It's great to be working for a monopoly.
How bout that Ebay ?
 
Exactly right, I noticed the same thing, if they were such a great financial channel why do they end their evenings at 9pm. Years back I remember they used to end their program around 6pm, now 9pm. What they should do is run CNBC Asia like you said, also on weekends it turns to "AS SEEN ON TV", every program after another is trying to sell you something.



Rather than switch to CNBC Asia in the evenings, they run reality television shows that air the week earlier on NBC. If CNBC was a serious business channel, you'd think once "Fast Money" ended, they'd toss the feed to Asia for true 24-hour market coverage.
 
Ummmm... you're just now realizing this about CNBC?

Of course it's just foood for the masses.

In my office, the TV only shows reruns of Planet Earth or Sunrise Earth with mute enabled. Amazing how much clearer your thought process is.
 
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