If financial news makes you think of ticker tapes and dull men in gray suits, you obviously haven’t been tuning in lately. CNBC, which bills itself as a business-news network, has won a loyal following by obsessively covering the market–including Bartiromo’s information-filled reports. But the network owes the robustness of its bottom line–about $85 million in profits in 1996 –to non-news extras: tabloid-talk-show star Geraldo Rivera (who hosts CNBC’s most-watched program) and infomercials. Its stable of easy-on-the-eye anchors hasn’t been bad for business either. On Wall Street, where CNBC is the network of choice, traders make no secret of why CNBC beats competitors like Bloomberg TV and CNNfn. Explains one fund manager, who refused to be identified, “Bartiromo’s a babe.”
CNBC first aired in 1989, and the timing couldn’t have been better. Over the next seven years, the number of Americans with stock investments skyrocketed from just under 21 percent to 45 percent. The audience for financial news grew exponentially. Today CNBC reaches 62 million U.S. subscribers-only 10 million short of cable titan CNN. But there’s a catch: on days when the market isn’t doing cartwheels, only 164,000 households on average are watching. To lure advertisers, CNBC stresses the quality of its audience (rich folks with money to burn) over sheer numbers. As proof of their pull with the investor set, the network’s execs point to a highly graphic segment on cybersex that aired in March. The scenes of scantily clothed women mouthing obscenities certainly caught Wall Street’s attention. When it aired at 12:82 p.m., trading volume on the NYSE plummeted 87 percent, only to bounce back at 12:36 p.m., when the peep show ended.
There is no getting around the fact, however, that CNBC doesn’t have what advertisers want most: a single business show that maintains an audience above 200,000. That’s why this-fall CNBC will take its biggest gamble yet on the financial world’s appetite for glamour. The network has tapped Bartiromo to cohost a new 7 p.m. market wrap-up show, the program will not only fill the transition into the evening lineup, but it will ,go head to head with CNN’s “Moneyline,” the highest, rated business show on television. To her credit, Bartiromo, now 29, is not just some photogenic Ms. Financial America. Before CNBC recognized her appeal and scooped her up in 1995, she had worked at CNN for five years as a writer, producer and editor. She also pens a market column for Individual Investor magazine. Still, as executives at other networks point out, she can hardly mater the experience or reputation of “Moneyline’s” veteran white-haired host Lou Dobbs. “She’ll sink,” predicts one competitor flatly.
CNBC’s rivals eagerly, point out the-flaws in the network’s strategy. They argue that its lock on viewers will slip as competitors start offering serious alternatives. Already, in the 6 a.m.-7 a.m. time slot, CNBC programming comes in behind not only CNN but also the USA Network’s new Bloomberg report. The network relies on infomercials to bring in 20 percent of revenues, which means that 25 percent of air time must be given over to programming done by advertisers–an embarrassing amount for a network that’s supposed to be delivering news to cable subscribers. Bartiromo, say these critics, is no cure for the network’s need for heft in its lineup. CNBC president Bill Bolster counters by saying he isn’t trying to muscle in on Dobbs’s audience but to build a new constituency. The majority of “Moneyline” viewers are older than 55, he argues, so if Bartiromo captures any percentage of Wall Street’s younger up-and-comers, she’ll be doing the network a great service. For her part, Bartiromo thinks that, the craving for financial news is growing so quickly that there is room for everybody. Business news is just sexy these days," she says. And she should know.
