History Of CNBC

NBCUniversal News Group, a division of Comcast's NBCUniversal, owns CNBC, which is a business news channel in the United States. During the morning, daytime trading hours, and early evening hours, the network airs business news and analysis programming.

During off-peak hours, such as weekday prime time and weekends, the network fills its schedule with business-related documentaries and reality television programming, as well as occasional presentations from NBC Sports.

CNBC has a financial news website called CNBC.com, which features news articles, videos, podcasts, and subscription-based services. The headquarters and primary studios of CNBC are in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. In addition, the company has a studio at the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square, New York City.

The Consumer News and Business Channel was established in April 1989 as a joint venture between NBC and Cablevision.

It was later renamed CNBC. After NBC went bankrupt in 1991, it purchased the competitor Financial News Network (FNN) and merged it with CNBC. It also bought Cablevision's interest in CNBC, giving it complete control of the network.

In addition to its activities in the United States, CNBC runs the foreign branches CNBC Europe and CNBC Asia, and is engaged in additional international affiliates via joint ventures and franchise agreements.

In 2023, CNBC had more overall day and primetime viewers than its main competitor, Fox Business, although Fox had more viewers than CNBC during trading hours.

The Satellite Program Network (SPN), which was founded in 1979, is the origin of CNBC. SPN was a low-budget network that aired a combination of classic movies, educational programs, and entertainment shows. Later on, the station changed its name to Tempo Television. After first signing a letter of intent to purchase Tempo

In June 1988, NBC made the decision to enter into an agreement to rent the transponder for the channel. On April 17, 1989, the channel was relaunched as the Consumer News and Business Channel, with Neil Cavuto as the host for the inaugural broadcast.

Tom Rogers was in charge of the station's relaunch on this platform. Initially, CNBC was a 50-50 joint venture between NBC and Cablevision, and its headquarters were located in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Sue Herera and Scott Cohn joined CNBC at its debut

At initially, CNBC had a lot of trouble gaining cable carriage since many providers were dubious about putting it next to the Financial News Network, which had been around for a longer time. Despite the size of its parent company, NBC, CNBC was only available in 17 million households by the winter of 1990, which was less than half of the potential reach of FNN.

FNN filed for bankruptcy protection and placed itself up for sale on March 2, 1991, after an accounting controversy. On May 21, 1991, CNBC was granted FNN by a bankruptcy court for $154.3 million after a bidding battle with a partnership of Dow Jones & Company and Westinghouse Broadcasting. The two enterprises were then integrated.

Around 60 of FNN's 300 employees were recruited by CNBC, including Joe Kernen, who is still with the station today and joined CNBC at that time.Bloomberg Television employed other individuals who used to work for FNN.The agreement expanded the network's reach to more than 40 million households.

After the purchase was finalized, Cablevision sold its 49.5% interest in CNBC to NBC.In August 1993, Roger Ailes was appointed president of CNBC. Bob Wright, the CEO of NBC, gave Ailes the job of making the network profitable again.

In January 1996, Ailes departed because he disagreed with management on a number of issues, notably the choice by NBC management to partner with Microsoft and rename "America's Talking" as MSNBC. Ailes's leadership saw CNBC's yearly income increase from $43 million to $110 million.

In March 1996, CNBC Europe, which is located in London, was founded. This was preceded by the debut of CNBC Asia, which is based in Hong Kong, in June 1995.

In December 1997, CNBC and Dow Jones forged a strategic collaboration. This included exchanging programming with Dow Jones Newswires, The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, and Barron's, as well as rebranding 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. Additionally, CNBC shut down its Hong Kong-based operation and moved the new CNBC Asia to ABN's studios in Singapore.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, CNBC's ratings rose rapidly, frequently surpassing those of CNN during market hours, as the stock market was also on the rise.In 2000, the network's greatest number of viewers throughout the day was 343,000.

However, as the dot-com bubble broke, the number of people watching CNBC also went down. In 2002, CNBC's ratings dropped by 44%, and then they plummeted by another 5% in 2003.The network's ratings gradually decreased until they reached their lowest point in the first quarter of 2005, when the average number of viewers throughout the day was 134,000.

The CNBC website was run by MSN from 2001 until 2006.

In August 2003, CNBC entered into an agreement to get weather material from AccuWeather.In October 2003, CNBC relocated its international headquarters from Fort Lee, which became the new home of Telemundo flagship station WNJU, to a new digital video production center in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

At the end of 2005, NBC Universal regained complete ownership of CNBC Europe and CNBC Asia, both of which were losing money, from Dow Jones. The license deal between Dow and CNBC U.S. was in effect until it ended in 2012.

According to CNBC, the company's yearly sales in 2006 was $510 million.[36] The FTSE CNBC Global 300 stock market index was created by CNBC in September 2006 in partnership with FTSE Group.

The index consists of the fifteen biggest corporations from each of the sectors of the Industry Classification Benchmark, as well as the thirty largest companies from developing markets. In 2007, CNBC made more than $333 million in profit, which made it the second most lucrative of NBC Universal's thirteen cable networks in the United States. The only station that made more money than CNBC was the USA Network.