CNBC – Fire Mark Hoffman

Yesterday, Jim Cramer ended up in my Twitter stream somehow ranting about how Twitter needs to fire Dick Costolo. The stock has struggled of late for sure and management changes are happening in droves.

When CNBC does decide to talk about stocks and companies, it’s as an armchair quarterback, because the talking heads have not for the most part run their own businesses. Jim has some experience draining market value from The Street since 1999, so he would know about failed exec teams and boards. The Street has seen the stock peak at $47 in 1999 and settle in comfortably at $2 today.

Since Mark Hoffman took the helm of CNBC in 2005, he has enjoyed the 2008 crash and the birth of Twitter (here his is bio, he is supposedly a rare sighting at the studio according to people inside I have asked).

I am not going to say that Mark has the easiest TV job in the country, but the brand should not be as unwatchable as it has become. The markets are open all day and the smartest minds in the world are addicted to it. DRAMA 101.

Bloomberg stuck a few camera’s out west and now interviews every important founder and VC daily since 2009. Good content. topical, educational, interesting.

Mark Hoffman has the Comcast empire under which to build something watchable. He has not. Here is the Wikipedia page,. Uninspiring from top to bottom.

This year, ratings hit 21 year lows.

I can’t find a vision statement.

I can’t find any of their digital ticker pages and stories in a standard google search ‘ticker or ‘news’ lookup.

If it was not for Twitter, which they seem to spend a lot of time discussing, they would not be relevant at all. ESPN has done a fantastic job weaving in Twitter to grow their brands and audience. CNBC cheapens twitter with their ‘TWICKER’ (Twitter Ticker) and their inability to grow digital or mobile in the digital and mobile era. Hoffman should shoulder this blame.

These problems all start at the top with Hoffman, so while we have calls for Twitter’s head at the $24 billion company, it might just be time to look at the head of CNBC who is lucky to be hiding out inside the Comcast empire.

I say Mark is on borrowed time and needs to be removed for CNBC quickly or Bloomberg and the web will crush the network at an accelerating pace.