CNBC Launches
The Consumer News and Business Channel launched in April 1989 as a joint NBC and Cablevision experiment, built from the remains of the Financial News Network after NBC acquired it. Early ratings were modest and the channel lost money for years. By the mid-1990s, bull-market retail interest turned it into required viewing on every trading floor. Ticker crawls, split screens, and live Fed-day coverage became the visual grammar of markets. The made-for-TV market commentator was born here.
The era of the visibly-certain TV pundit began here. Jim Cramer, Larry Kudlow, and countless others built careers on being watchable first and accurate second — a tradeoff that still defines financial media today.
05 · CNBC & the Analyst
Financial media became a consumer product. CNBC, Bloomberg Television, and a thousand analysts at brokerage desks issued ratings, price targets, and prophetic-sounding commentary — some of it honest, much of it conflicted.
Read the full era →