CNBC now running a "deathwatch"

David Gaffen of The Wall Street Journal writes Thursday on his MarketBeat blog how CNBC is now running a scroll at the bottom of the screen for troubled companies.

Gaffen writes, “Right now, though, the current scroll includes quotes of Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, and a third stock — rotating between Merrill Lynch and American International Group. It’s sort of the ‘death watch’ for financials, and it might mean that all of this is coming to the close soon enough.

“‘When there are high-interest pieces of information that we can provide in real-time, we like to do that because our audience craves it,’ says Jonathan Wald, senior vice-president of business news at CNBC. The network generally in the past has stuck to highlighting major markets rather than individual stocks.

“Doug Kass, president of Seabreeze Partners Management, says it may be the ‘best contrary sign extant that the financials are in the later stages of capitulatory selling… remember the bug on CNBC that presaged the DJIA 14,000 celebration?’

“Mr. Wald says that ‘we’re constantly giving our viewers what’s in the news at that moment — it makes sense to highlight a given sector.'”

Read more here.