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Pastimes : CNBC -- critique. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tombet who wrote (3976)	11/11/1999 11:05:00 AM
From: arno	Respond to of 17683

You know folks, as we set here doing our thing, let us not ever forget the sacrifices that have been made for us...

To: tombet who wrote (3976)	11/11/1999 1:47:00 PM
From: Gary M. Reed	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 17683

Agreed. The only huckster in the whole CNBC bunch is Maria "The Ferret" Bartiromo. Yeah, there are times when other CNBC personalities have rubbed me the wrong way, but that's just the nature of their business. By and large, these guys do a good job of presenting what is given to them. I think if I have a beef with CNBC, it would be directed at the producers, who determine what the content of each show will be. Let's face it, if Ted, Haines or "Thermonuclear Destruction" Ron are told by producers to beat a dead horse, there's not a lot they can do about it. In fact, I kind of sympathise with the mainstream anchors. A couple of 38-year olds living in their parents' basements decide to devote an SI board to The Ferret and follow through by diligently calling in to each of her "buy-sell-hold" segments with "I LOVE YOU MARIA" and the producers are dumb enough to believe that there is a demographic here...so they give Maria a 5-year blockbuster contract, as if she was the Walter Cronkite of the network. What?!! If I were Ted or Ron, I would be furious over this development. In fact, I think Kernan and Faber do their best to integrate a full cadre of "hot stocks" in their daily presentations, but the producers tell them and the anchors to continually beat the "Cisco, AOL, Microsoft, Dell" drum in search of cheap ratings. Again, I think this problem would correct itself if CNBC would divide itself into two entities...a CNBC-Lite, where all the "me-too" stocks would be mentioned constantly, and a premium channel CNBC where the more skilled anchors and reporters would go indepth on stocks, not worrying about having to mention AOL, MSFT, DELL, CSCO and YHOO every 5 minutes to maintain ratings. In fact, the ticker on CNBC-Lite could simply be 5-10 stocks...all the me-too stocks. Why waste time on a full ticker when your viewership only wants to know what AOL is doing? Furthermore, they could keep the Ferret on CNBC-Lite, which would serve all interested parties. Guys living in their parents' basement would probably be loathe to spend extra money on a premium channel, so they'd be devout CNBC-Lite addicts; meanwhile, everyone who is sick of the Ferret and her constant self-promotion gimmicks would already be tuned into CNBC Premium and therefore would not have to stomach the coo-ing.