Categories: OLD Media Moves

CNBC unlikely to have attracted new viewers with debate performance

Helaine Olen writes for Slate that the increase in viewers that CNBC was hoping for with its performance in presenting the Republican presidential debate is unlikely to happen because of its poor performance.

Olen writes, “There were several major follow-up fails. When asked about retirement policy, Carly Fiorina argued that the federal government has no business setting a minimum wage. She wasn’t asked to elaborate. When Rubio was asked about his somewhat-shabby personal finances, and mentioned he owned a home near his parents, no one thought to ask about his history of buying homes with zero-percent-down loans.

“There was nothing Quick or Harwood—who generally remained calm and managed to ask decent questions—could do to make up for this circus.

“All in all, CNBC feels like a guest who stayed at the party too long. Its stock ticker was the signature visual of the dotcom-boom era. Even in 2008, it managed to average between 250,000 and 300,000 viewers during its prime weekday morning and afternoon viewing times. Now it’s notching less than half that, and the network has been reduced to claiming that even people who are in the presence of a television tuned into the network at a broker’s office or hotel gym count as viewers.

“Jim Cramer has never really recovered from Jon Stewart’s evisceration of his on-air work. Maria Bartiromo, the Money Honey, has decamped for Fox Business. And a debate that the network hoped could revive its mojo only revealed how over the hill it truly is. No doubt CNBC got ratings Wednesday evening. But I highly doubt that what transpired on air convinced any new viewers they should tune back in.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.