Nowadays, CNBC is a topic that has gained great relevance in society. With the advancement of technology and globalization, CNBC has become a key point of discussion in different areas, from politics to popular culture. As CNBC continues to be a focus of interest, there is more and more debate surrounding this topic. However, despite its importance, there are still many unknowns and conflicting opinions about CNBC, which makes it necessary to address this issue in detail, analyzing its different aspects and perspectives. In this article, we will explore the different aspects of CNBC and its impact on today's society.
Country | United States |
---|---|
Broadcast area | United States, Canada |
Headquarters | Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, U.S. |
Programming | |
Language(s) | English |
Picture format | 1080i HDTV |
Ownership | |
Owner | Comcast |
Parent | NBCUniversal News Group |
Sister channels | |
History | |
Launched | April 17, 1989 |
Replaced | |
Links | |
Website | www |
Availability | |
Streaming media | |
CNBC Pro | CNBC Pro (requires subscription) |
ClaroTV+ | (requires subscription to access content)
|
CNBC is an American business news channel owned by the NBCUniversal Media Group, a subsidiary of Comcast's NBCUniversal. The network broadcasts business news and analysis programming during the morning, daytime trading day, and early-evening hours, while off-peak hours (such as weekday prime time and weekends) are filled by business-themed documentaries and reality television programming, as well as occasional NBC Sports presentations. CNBC operates an accompanying financial news website, CNBC.com, which includes news articles, video and podcast content, as well as subscription-based services. CNBC's headquarters and main studios are located in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, while it also maintains a studio at the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square, New York City.
CNBC was originally founded in April 1989 as the Consumer News and Business Channel, a joint venture between NBC and Cablevision. Following its 1991 bankruptcy, NBC acquired the competing Financial News Network (FNN) and merged it into CNBC, and acquired Cablevision's stake in CNBC to give it full ownership.
In addition to its U.S. operations, CNBC operates the international branches CNBC Europe and CNBC Asia, and is involved in other international affiliates via joint ventures and franchise arrangements.
In 2023, CNBC had higher total day and primetime viewership than its rival, Fox Business, but finished behind Fox in trading day viewership.
1912 | Universal Pictures is founded |
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1926 | NBC is founded |
1928 | Universal Cartoon Studios (later known as Universal Animation Studios) is founded |
1943 | Universal Television is founded |
1953 | NBC begins first compatible color broadcasts, preceding other networks by nine years |
1956 | NBC's peacock logo debuts |
1963 | American Cable Systems is founded |
1964 | Universal Studios Hollywood opens |
1967 | NBC broadcasts the first-ever Super Bowl |
1968 | American Cable Systems rebrands to Comcast |
1972 | Comcast began trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) |
1975 | PolyGram Filmed Entertainment is founded Universal releases Jaws |
1982 | Universal releases E.T. The Extra Terrestrial |
1983 | Sally premieres |
1985 | Universal's Back to the Future premieres |
1986 | General Electric buys NBC for $6.4 billion NBC's modern peacock logo was introduced |
1989 | NBC launches CNBC |
1990 | Sky is founded Universal Studios Florida opens Law & Order premieres |
1991 | Universal releases Backdraft and Cape Fear Jerry Springer and Maury both premiere |
1992 | Dateline NBC premieres |
1993 | Universal releases Jurassic Park and Schindler's List Homicide: Life on the Street premieres |
1994 | DreamWorks Animation is founded New York Undercover premieres |
1996 | NBC and Microsoft launch MSNBC |
1998 | Seagram acquires PolyGram Filmed Entertainment Universal Television becomes Studios USA Television |
1999 | PolyGram Filmed Entertainment is folded into Universal Pictures Universal Studios Florida expands to become Universal Orlando Resort Law & Order: Special Victims Unit premieres |
2001 | Grand opening of Universal Studios Japan Universal releases The Fast and the Furious and A Beautiful Mind Law & Order: Criminal Intent premieres |
2002 | NBC acquires Telemundo and Bravo Focus Features is formed Comcast acquires AT&T Broadband for $44.5 billion |
2003 | Universal becomes the first studio with five summer releases breaking the $100 million mark |
2004 | GE and Vivendi merge NBC and Universal into NBCUniversal |
2005 | Law & Order: Trial by Jury and The Office both premiere Focus Features releases The Constant Gardener and Brokeback Mountain Comcast sets up a joint-venture with PBS, Sesame Workshop & HIT Entertainment to form PBS Kids Sprout Comcast & Time Warner Cable jointly acquire Adelphia Cable assets for $17.6 billion |
2006 | USA Network begins 13-year streak as #1 cable network in total viewers Focus Features releases Hollywoodland and Catch a Fire |
2007 | Illumination is founded The Steve Wilkos Show premieres |
2010 | Universal releases Despicable Me Law & Order: LA premieres |
2011 | Vivendi divested in NBCU; Comcast buys 51% of NBCU from GE, turning it into a limited liability company The name "PBS Kids" is dropped out from Sprout (Leaving the name "Sprout") NBCUniversal Archives is founded |
2012 | Universal celebrates its 100th anniversary Chicago Fire premieres |
2013 | Comcast buys GE's remaining 49% of NBCU PBS sells Sprout to Comcast/NBCU |
2014 | Comcast attempts to acquire Time Warner Cable for $45.2 billion Chicago P.D. premieres NBCUniversal reaches a new long-term deal with WWE |
2015 | Chicago Med premieres |
2016 | NBCU acquires DreamWorks Animation |
2017 | Chicago Justice premieres Sprout relaunches as Universal Kids |
2018 | Comcast acquires Sky after a heated bidding war with 21st Century Fox FBI premieres |
2019 | NBCU acquires Cineo Lighting Judge Jerry premieres |
2020 | NBCU launches Peacock FBI: Most Wanted premieres |
2021 | Grand opening of Universal Beijing Resort Law & Order: Organized Crime and FBI: International both premiere |
2022 | Karamo and Lopez vs Lopez both premiere |
2023 | Universal releases The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken and Oppenheimer |
CNBC's roots date back to the founding in 1979 of the Satellite Program Network (SPN), which showed a low-budget mix of old movies and instructional and entertainment programs. The channel later changed its name to Tempo Television. After initially signing a letter of intent to acquire Tempo, NBC opted for a deal to lease the channel's transponder in June 1988. On this platform, and under the guidance of Tom Rogers, the channel was relaunched on April 17, 1989, as the Consumer News and Business Channel. NBC and Cablevision initially operated CNBC as a 50–50 joint venture, and it was headquartered in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Sue Herera and Scott Cohn joined CNBC at its inception.
CNBC had considerable difficulty getting cable carriage at first, as many providers were skeptical of placing it alongside the longer-established Financial News Network. By the winter of 1990, CNBC was in only 17 million homes – less than half of FNN's potential reach – despite the size of NBC, its parent.
After an accounting scandal, FNN filed for bankruptcy protection on March 2, 1991, and put itself up for sale. After a bidding war with a Dow Jones & Company–Westinghouse Broadcasting consortium, CNBC was awarded FNN by a bankruptcy judge for $154.3 million on May 21, 1991, and merged the two operations. CNBC hired around 60 of FNN's 300-person workforce. Bill Griffeth and Joe Kernen, who are still with the channel, joined CNBC at that time. Other former FNN's workforce were hired by Bloomberg Television. The deal increased the distribution of the network to over 40 million homes. Cablevision sold its 49.5% stake in CNBC to NBC upon completion of the deal.
Roger Ailes was hired as the president of CNBC in August 1993, tasked by NBC CEO Bob Wright with turning around the struggling network. Ailes resigned in January 1996 due to disagreements with management including the decision by NBC management to form a joint venture with Microsoft that included the rebrand of "America's Talking" as MSNBC. Under the leadership of Ailes, annual revenue at CNBC rose from $43 million to $110 million.
CNBC launched CNBC Asia, headquartered in Singapore in June 1995 and CNBC Europe, headquartered in London, in March 1996.
In December 1997, CNBC formed a strategic alliance with Dow Jones, including content sharing with Dow Jones Newswires, The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, and Barron's and the rebranding of the channel as "a service of NBC and Dow Jones" (later "a service of NBC Universal and Dow Jones" following the formation of NBC Universal in 2004). Fox merged with Dow Jones in 2007 and Fox Business later became a competitor to CNBC.
Also in December 1997, CNBC's international channels were merged into a 50–50 joint venture with their Dow Jones–owned rivals, London-based European Business News and Singapore-based Asia Business News.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, CNBC's ratings increased sharply along with the stock market, often beating those of CNN during market hours. The highest daytime viewership of the network in 2000 was 343,000.
However, after the burst of the dot-com bubble, CNBC's viewing figures declined in tandem. In 2002, CNBC's ratings fell 44% and were down another 5% in 2003. The network's ratings steadily fell until bottoming in Q1 2005, with an average viewership of 134,000 during the day.
From 2001 to 2006, the CNBC website was operated by MSN.
In August 2003, CNBC signed a deal to provide weather content from AccuWeather.
In October 2003, CNBC moved its world headquarters from Fort Lee (which became the new home of Telemundo flagship station WNJU) to a new digital video production studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
NBC Universal reacquired full control of loss-making CNBC Europe and CNBC Asia from Dow Jones at the end of 2005. The licensing agreement between Dow and CNBC U.S. remained intact, until it expired in 2012.
CNBC reported annual revenues of $510 million in 2006. In September 2006, CNBC launched the FTSE CNBC Global 300 stock market index in conjunction with FTSE Group. The index includes the fifteen largest companies from each of the sectors of the Industry Classification Benchmark as well as the thirty largest companies from emerging markets. Profits at CNBC exceeded $333 million in 2007, making CNBC the second most profitable of NBC Universal's thirteen cable channels in the United States, behind only the USA Network. Ratings hit an all-time high in 2007.
CNBC Africa was launched on June 1, 2007. On October 22, 2007, CNBC introduced the "CNBC Investor Network", a network of webcams stationed in the trading rooms of various independent financial institutions across the United States, allowing traders to be interviewed instantaneously as news breaks. In December 2007, CNBC formed a content partnership with Yahoo! Finance.
In January 2008, CNBC formed a content partnership with The New York Times, which was seen as an attempt by both parties to take on increased competition from News Corporation. In May 2008, CNBC formed a content partnership with AOL.
Average daytime viewership (6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.) reached a seven-year high of 310,000 viewers in the first quarter of 2008. Ratings plummeted in 2009 as the network aired bad economic news resulting from the Great Recession. In January 2010, the launch of the Korean language channel SBS-CNBC marked the fifteenth CNBC-branded channel worldwide. In July 2010, BT signed a five-year contract with CNBC Europe to distribute content from its London headquarters to sister sites in Europe and the US.
In 2011, CNBC won an award at the International Broadcasting Convention for its CNBC 4D: Interactive motion tracking that allows CNBC presenters to interact with 3D graphics, using technology from Unreel, Brainstorm, Motion Analysis. In June 2012, CNBC expanded its partnership with Yahoo! Finance in an effort to reach more online viewers. That month, CNBC.com had 6.5 million unique visitors in the United States while Yahoo! Finance had 37.5 million.
In 2013, host Maria Bartiromo left CNBC for Fox Business in part because Fox offered her $5–6 million per year compared to the $4 million per year that she made at CNBC. Also that year, CNBC took over production of the popular public television program Nightly Business Report from NBR Worldwide, a subsidiary of Atalaya Global Management.
On January 6, 2015, CNBC changed the way it calculates ratings, switching from Nielsen ratings to a system by Cogent Research to calculate the viewership of its business day programming by surveying financial advisers and investors, with the goal of providing a more accurate measurement of the network's out-of-home viewership; Nielsen is still used to track the viewership of its entertainment programming.
In October 2015, a Republican Party candidates debate hosted by CNBC was seen by 14 million viewers—the highest viewership of a CNBC program to-date.
On January 10, 2016, CNBC announced a new partnership with Indonesian broadcaster Trans Media to form CNBC Indonesia.
By 2017, Fox Business had overtaken CNBC as the most watched daytime business news network.
CNBC's online video operations generated an all-time high of 1.92 billion total digital video starts across platforms in 2020.
In 2020, CNBC hired former Fox News Channel anchor Shepard Smith to host a new evening newscast on the channel, The News with Shepard Smith, which premiered that September. It was positioned as an objective, "fact-based" national newscast.
In September 2021, CNBC signed a new multi-platform deal with Jim Cramer; in addition to his existing television roles, the agreement includes the co-development of live events and digital content through his company Cramer Media (replacing his previous arrangement with TheStreet, which Cramer had co-founded, and sold to The Arena Group in 2019), including a direct-to-consumer subscription service. In January 2022, the subscription service launched as the "CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer", which includes commentaries, stock picks, and monthly online meetings. The service operates alongside another CNBC subscription service, "CNBC Pro", which similarly provides exclusive content and over-the-top streaming of CNBC's networks.
In August 2022, Mark Hoffman stepped down as president of CNBC after 17 years at the network, being succeeded by NBCUniversal president of global advertising and partnerships KC Sullivan. Under Sullivan, the network began to refocus its programming to broaden appeal to its core business audience, including a promise of more business-related documentaries in primetime, and cancelling the low-rated The News with Shepard Smith in November 2022 in favor of the new financial news program Last Call with Brian Sullivan, which premiered in January 2023.
On December 11, 2023, CNBC underwent a major rebranding, updating its logo for the first time since 1996 (adopting the updated NBC peacock and corporate typeface introduced a year prior), and revamping its on-air graphics with a simpler flat design. The two-tiered stock ticker CNBC had historically used was replaced with a single scroll, with major indices now displayed in a strip below the stock ticker.
CNBC has a licensing partnership with Paradies Lagardère to operate retail locations in United States airports branded as CNBC News, CNBC Express, and CNBC SmartShop. The stores sell CNBC-branded merchandise as well as snacks and drinks.
CNBC has been criticized for allegedly amplifying bull and bear markets, particularly in the run-up to the dot-com bubble and the subprime mortgage crisis a decade later. In response to these criticisms, CNBC anchors have pointed to the size of the market and noted that influencing it is "a little out of our reach."
Jon Stewart on Comedy Central's The Daily Show has been a vocal critic of CNBC and some of its personalities, beginning after comments were made by Rick Santelli. Despite the lack of direct comments by the network, several personalities have defended their predictions and comments.
CNBC was accused by the Obama administration of "cable chatter"—the excessive and sometimes brutal discussion on a particular topic, often one-sided.
Regarding CNBC's Mad Money host Jim Cramer, an August 20, 2007 article in Barron's stated that "his picks haven't beaten the market. Over the past two years, viewers holding Cramer's stocks would be up 12% while the Dow rose 22% and the S&P 500 16%."
On October 10, 2007, CNBC HD, a 1080i high-definition television simulcast of CNBC, was launched, first on DirecTV.
On October 13, 2014, coincidentally the 11th anniversary of CNBC's relocation to its current facilities in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, CNBC switched to a full 16:9 letterbox presentation, in line with CNBC Asia and CNBC Europe.
Current notable programming (as of March 2024)
CNBC occasionally serves as an outlet for NBC Sports programming. Mainly, this has occurred on weekends, especially the afternoon, and its coverage is purposefully limited away from any part of the American trading day on weekdays.
Consistent programming includes the Premier League and the Olympics.
Beginning in 2000, CNBC has carried portions of NBC's coverage of the Olympic Games outside of business day hours. The frequent delegation of curling coverage to CNBC during the 2010 Winter Olympics helped the sport gain a cult following among the business community.
Generally, during weekdays CNBC airs coverage from 5-8PM ET, following business coverage. During weekends, CNBC carries much more extensive Olympic coverage.