Financial News Networks Profited From Fall

When CNBC programming vice president Bruno Cohen was growing up in the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, he says jokingly, “You made a face at your dad when he read the business pages, and nobody went down to Wall Street except to protest. . . . Today, business news is cool.”

When the stock market dropped 554 points on Oct. 27, business-news TV networks that have capitalized on the growing interest in financial news had their version of the Persian Gulf War: a riveting event that drew viewers to their networks the way the 1991 conflict sent CNN’s ratings soaring.

CNBC, which is available in 65 million homes, posted record ratings that day, quadrupling its normal daytime audience at one point to reach more than 1 million households.

CNN, which picked up the feed of its fledgling financial-news network CNNfn, doubled its average daytime rating to 870,000 households and saw anchor Lou Dobbs’ “Moneyline” show gets its second highest rating of the year (after an installment that ran in the week following Princess Diana’s death, when CNN’s viewership was up across the board).

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Two weeks after the stock market’s dramatic drop and rebound, CNBC is continuing to see a “halo” effect from the tune-in it received. CNBC’s ratings were up 27% last week compared to the first three weeks in October.

“The events in October clearly brought us new viewers, while regular viewers stayed with us for longer periods of time,” Cohen said. “It gives us sampling for our programming. And, unlike events like the Gulf War, the stock market story doesn’t end.”

CNNfn, which is available in 8.5 million households, does not yet get Nielsen ratings, but the ratings for “Moneyline,” which runs both on CNN and CNNfn, were 50% higher last week than before Oct. 27. Dobbs is certain that CNNfn will benefit.

“You can’t have as wide an exposure as we did on CNN worldwide and not have a significantly higher consciousness of both the brand and the product,” said Dobbs, who is president of CNNfn as well as its main anchor. “This will help us get more distribution from cable operators as well as more viewers.”

The affluent viewers who watch financial news are highly prized by advertisers. CNBC, launched in 1989, will make an estimated $120 million in profit this year. CNNfn, the brainchild of financial-news pioneer Dobbs, started in 1995.