CNBC Ratings at New Lows...How? ...and Why Can’t Business TV Do What ESPN Does?

I really don’t get it.

I mean I get why Bloomberg and Reuters will never do great business television. They need to protect their terminal businesses. It’s after that I am at a loss.

Americans are entrepreneurial. We have short memories which are perfect for bull markets, ratings and money. We are the largest exporters of debt and culture. We have Silicon Valley and the best and biggest stock markets opened 5 days a week. We have athletes and entertainers making billions of dollars. They spend it, they invest it, they piss it away.

We have Nike, Google, Apple, Tesla, Facebook, 3M, Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer, IBM, Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Venture Capitalists galore.

Is this an opportunity (yes)? Should we be ashamed (yes)? Is the language less important than Chinese or Spanish? (F#%^k NO)

It’s easy to poke fun at CNBC, but they are a business and they are going to do what they do. They are pointed in a direction.

Are their ratings slide an opportunity or a death knell for business television?

Take a look at this chart from Hert Capital:

How do we interpret this chart. Are we that apathetic towards business and stocks? Is it the ETF phenomenon?

I would argue that this one chart could be the subject of a week of arguments, probing and programming by a business channel.

I have heard about big data for two years now. The best readers of big data are not the companies plugged into twitter, they are CMT’s and options traders. They have been doing it for decades.

Who is in the best position to attack this opportunity?

Is it TechCrunch and AOL? That could be cool.

Is it a consortium of business schools and corporations? That would be awesome.

What about ESPN – the most innovative and dominant network of our time.

They have the audience, they have the network, they have the talent and more important, they have no baggage of what business television should be. The New York Times just wrote an excellent pice on them being on the offensive to protect their empire.

It starts with one show…a pre market or lunchtime or post market show…maybe even just a late night show and market wrap. It’s athletes, CEO’s and entertainers talking about money. It’s main street America discussing not just Tesla’s stock price but this 4 minute Tesla video on how they are made.

It just needs some fresh eyes, a push, a jumpstart. It has to be coming. I feel it.