History
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, [2] NBC opted for a deal to lease the channel's transponder in June 1988. [3] 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 with Neil Cavuto anchoring this first broadcast. NBC and Cablevision initially operated CNBC as a 50–50 joint venture, [4] [5] and it was headquartered in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Sue Herera and Scott Cohn joined CNBC at its inception. [6] [7] [8]
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. [9]
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. [10] CNBC hired around 60 of FNN's 300-person workforce, including Joe Kernen who is still with the channel, joined CNBC at that time. [11] [12] Other former FNN's workforce were hired by Bloomberg Television. [13] The deal increased the distribution of the network to over 40 million homes. [13] Cablevision sold its 49.5% stake in CNBC to NBC upon completion of the deal. [14]
Roger Ailes was hired as the president of CNBC in August 1993, [15] [16] 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. [17] [18]
In June 1995, CNBC launched the Hong Kong-based CNBC Asia, [19] [20] and CNBC Europe, headquartered in London, in March 1996. [21]
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". As part of the agreement, Dow Jones merged their competing business news channels—London-based European Business News and Singapore-based Asia Business News—into CNBC Europe and CNBC Asia respectively, with CNBC shutting down its Hong Kong–based operation and relocating the new CNBC Asia to ABN's Singapore studios. [22] [23] [24]
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. [25] The highest daytime viewership of the network in 2000 was 343,000. [26]
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. [27] The network's ratings steadily fell until bottoming in Q1 2005, with an average viewership of 134,000 during the day. [28]
From 2001 [29] [30] to 2006, the CNBC website was operated by MSN. [31] [32]
In August 2003, CNBC signed a deal to provide weather content from AccuWeather. [33]
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. [34] [35]
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. [36]
CNBC reported annual revenues of $510 million in 2006. [37] 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. [38] 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. [39] Ratings hit an all-time high in 2007. [40] [41]
CNBC Africa was launched on June 1, 2007. [42] On October 22, 2007, CNBC introduced the "CNBC Investor Network", a network of webcams stationed in the operating departments of various independent financial institutions across the United States, allowing traders to be interviewed instantaneously as news breaks. [43] In December 2007, CNBC formed a content partnership with Yahoo! Finance. [44]
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. [45] [46] [47] In May 2008, CNBC formed a content partnership with AOL. [48]
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. [39] Ratings plummeted in 2009 as the network aired bad economic news resulting from the Great Recession. [49] In January 2010, the launch of the Korean language channel SBS-CNBC marked the fifteenth CNBC-branded channel worldwide. [50] 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. [51]
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. [52] 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. [53]
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. [54] [55] [56] [57] 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. [58]
The company publishes annual lists, including the CNBC Disruptor 50 since 2013 [59] and the CNBC25 since 2014. [60]
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. [61]
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. [62] [63]
On January 10, 2016, CNBC announced a new partnership with Indonesian broadcaster Trans Media to form CNBC Indonesia. [64]
By 2017, Fox Business had overtaken CNBC as the most watched daytime business news network. [65] [66]
CNBC's online video operations generated an all-time high of 1.92 billion total digital video starts across platforms in 2020. [67]
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. [68] [69]
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. [70] 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. [71] [72]
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, [73] [74] [75] 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, [76] [74] [69] and ran until July 18, 2024. [77]
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), [78] 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. [74]
In November 2024, a Brazilian affiliate known as Times Brasil launched as CNBC's first local franchise in South America. It was founded by Douglas Tavolaro, who had originally founded CNN Brasil. [79] [80] [81]
On November 20, 2024, NBCUniversal announced its intent to spin off most of its cable networks, including CNBC, as a new publicly-traded company controlled by Comcast shareholders. It is currently unclear how the spin-off will affect CNBC, including whether it will still be able to use NBC News resources or the NBC brand. CNBC had largely operated autonomously from NBC News until Cesar Conde became head of the NBCUniversal News Group in 2020, after which the network began to engage in some resource sharing with the division. [82] [83] [84] [85]
