Remember what Phil wrote about CNBC back in Dec. 2010? Of course you do, but I'll help you with the actual words anyway:
CNBC has, overall, a 36% drop in ratings caused, perhaps, by 36% of the people who listen to their advice losing their homes with the Fast Money crew dropping a precipitous 56% in the past 12 months but still holding onto the same audience (41K) as Cramer.
Why is CNBC failing in the ratings? Because they put people like Kudlow and Cramer and Adami and Najarian on TV instead of people (yes, like me) who are going to give you the real news and attempt to actually inform you. Now, here’s the thing you need to think about – what kind of TV show(s) have you ever heard of that lose half their audience in a year and remain on the air? The answer –PROPAGANDA!
Only a show that has an AGENDA other than making money could possibly stay on the air while it’s driving viewers away in droves. It takes years to build up a viewership but, as CNBC has proven, only 12 months to drive half of them away. Fast Money is not the only CNBC show that would have been canceled a year ago by any responsible programming executive – "The Call" is down 37%, "Power Lunch" is off 47%, "Street Signs" is down 45% and hour one of "Closing Bell" is down 43% while poor Maria drives another 8% away in hour 2.
So, is it a sign of a market top when CNBC only has an average of 47,000 suckers tuned in at any given moment? Sadly, in these thin market volumes, 47,000 sheeple mindlessly following Cramer off a cliff can still move the markets, so we have to torture ourselves daily and pay attention to what CNBC is saying as neither Fox Financial or Bloomberg have managed to match CNBC’s impact for moving the markets. Even now, when I go to visit brokers on Wall Street, every office has TVs tuned to CNBC (maybe they are not Nielson families), even though, clearly, the broadcasts did nothing at all to help Wall Street avert the last crash and, in fact, many would argue that their mindless trend-following and their constant cheer-leading for the latest bubble greatly exaggerated the damage done in the markets as people tune in expecting news and instead get nothing but PROPAGANDA that leads them to making very poor investment decisions…
And now, Doug Litowitz discusses CNBC in similar terms. Almost five years, and nothing has changed…
CNBC DEMYSTIFIED
By DOUG LITOWITZ
CNBC presents a paradox in the hedge fund community.
It plays constantly, but hardly anybody watches it.
The channel mostly functions as white noise emanating from wall-mounted monitors on trading floors and in financial firms.
Given its ubiquity, one might think it was highly regarded.
But traders and portfolio managers treat CNBC with scorn or indifference.
Few rely on CNBC for market information, preferring Bloomberg terminals or proprietary data sources.
The situation resembles George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the protagonist Winston Smith tuned out the massive telescreen on his apartment wall that issued endless streams of positive news.
As an experiment, I polled several friends who have a combined 100 years of experience in hedge funds. They couldn’t recall anyone saying, “I just got a game-changing idea on CNBC.” And during rare mentions of the channel, the commenter opines on the female anchors’ attractiveness or the quality of the male anchors’ suits.
According to Nielsen, CNBC commands a market share many multiples of its nearest competitor, Fox Business News, and perhaps a dozen times that of its second competitor, the more elite-minded Bloomberg Television.
This is puzzling. How can something so unpopular be so popular?
The answer is complex, and requires a deep dive to find CNBC’s true purpose.
CNBC is a news show, or in other words, it is supposed to provide content, information, and stock market advice.
By journalistic standards, it falls short of its task…
