George Szalai of The Hollywood Reporter writes that CNBC President Mark Hoffman recently gave a presentation at a media conference where he said that the business news network would see its fourth consecutive year of double-digit profit growth in 2009.
Szalai writes, “Asked about the effect that competition from Fox Business and Bloomberg TV has had on CNBC, Hoffman said: ‘We haven’t seen any impact on the top line. … We’re in our fourth year of double digital record-breaking profits.’
“Asked about ratings gains amid the financial crisis, he said the initial effect was a ‘spectacular audience’ that allowed the second-most profitable NBC Uni channel behind USA to temporarily go ‘from a niche channel to really a populist channel.’
“The usual 300,000 or so average viewership per hour in measured homes, which exclude trading floors and the like, at times jumped to more than 1 million during the crisis, he said.
“CNBC’s international channels in Europe and Asia and digital businesses — from CNBC.com to mobile — benefited from user spikes, boosting longer-term usage to new highs even after the crisis, according to Hoffman.”
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