CNBC’s Kernen and Faber provide stability for network

Marketwatch.com media columnist Jon Friedman writes Wednesday about CNBC reporters Joe Kernen and David Faber, whom he calls the stable rocks of the business news network.

Friedman writes, “I admit that I failed to appreciate Kernen and Faber for many years. I was turned off by Kernen’s blathering about his golf game, for example, and often found myself muttering: Just get on with it, man. Faber is so steady that it’s easy to neglect him.

“This changed recently. As the media discussed the talk that the ratings of ‘Squawk Box’ had declined notably the past year, I began to watch the show with a more critical eye.

“I found that I now welcomed Kernen’s penchant for meandering, and I also appreciated his quirkiness. What changed? I changed. Kernen had been doing this all along. I guess, in the end, he is an acquired taste.

“Kernen doesn’t usually subscribe to the notion that the shortest point between two objects is a straight line. He is here, and there, and back and forth. Why, then, does this approach work well?

“Because it’s entertaining.

“What’s often not entertaining is the network’s obsession with a numbing diet of equities and commodities analyses, mutual-fund managers, economists, interviews with CEOs, and panels of people who talk and talk and talk.”

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