Just an observation here... several commentators on this forum like the new programming and presentation on CNBC US, but here in the States, there is a lot of negative reaction to the changes. Here's a lowdown of the complaints:
Squawk Box team:
Most viewers complain about breaking up the old Squawk Box team. The new hosts have not yet found the same energy as the Haines-Faber-Kernen trio. By the time Mark Haines come on "Squawk on the Street," most east-coast viewers are already at work.
Ticker presentation:
The old CNBC US ticker was already smaller than its European and Asian counterparts. The new presentation has shrunk it even more, that it's no longer legible from a distance. The ticker is also lowered to a point where half of the lower band is cut off on many TV screens. Part of the new top ticker is cut off too. The designers probably did not take safe areas into account.
Ticker content:
CNBC opted for full company names and dropped the number of shares per trade on the ticker. That didn't receive much fanfare either. People are saying that investors already know the ticker symbols of the companies they are already investing, and company names on the tickers slow down information flow. And without the trade volumes, the ticker is omitting vital information to what is
really
happening in the market. It is also hard to distinguish between real-time trade data or stock recap during after-hours.
Top ticker:
A lot of people also don't like the new top ticker. Needless to say, it is less invasive than the old bug on the bottom-right. But the new top ticker makes it impossible to just "glance the bottom-right corner" for indices and stock prices at the same time. Now the viewer will have to exercise the eye just to follow information on both tickers -- it's hard to keep an eye on both at the same time.
Graphics/charts/hotboards:
The new stock charts receive a lot of complaints too. The graphics is really slick, but the text on the graphics is a lot smaller. Also, the swiveling 3D graphs are not easy to read -- with all the spinning and no major grid lines, you can no longer quite tell what the price is on a given point on the graph. Everytime a stock price changes, or the director switches to a new chart, there is some really slick 3D animation along with various sounds like "swoosh", "bop" and "beep". Again, very "cool" looking, but it takes a lot longer to display a new chart or to update a stock price. The sound effects were drowning out the words from the presenters and guests so much, they had to mute a lot of them on the second day.
Other complaints:
Minor culprits include the "hundredth of a second" clock on the charts (which just looks silly), and the overall design theme (now every show logo looks almost the same, and the theme musics sound almost the same too -- they are even more identical to one another than the 2000-2003 era).
Practicality:
One big reason why many viewers have complained might be because the designers did not think thoroughly enough about the audience of CNBC. Many people watch the channel at work on a TV mounted on a wall some 5 to 10 feet away, or they could be tuning in while running on the treadmill at the office gym, or they could be catching it at an airport lounge. The out-of-bound top-and-bottom tickers, the company names, the lack of trade volumes, the small text on graphics, the spinning charts and animations, and the sound effects all work
against
the business viewer who wants information fast. Is the new design state-of-the-art and slick and cool? You bet it is. Is it useful to the serious viewer? Most probably not.
All these changes are probably a reaction to the potential threat of the start-up Fox Business Channel (which is still up-in-the-air as we speak). But perhaps the changes came a little bit too hastily. We should wait and see what more changes will come down the pipe in the next few weeks, or whether CNBC will revert what it did, as it has done before. Remember the 8am-11am ET Squawk Box and the 1pm-3pm ET Power Lunch? Those lasted for just a couple of months before they returned to the old timeslots.
More comments on the changes on CNBC:
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/cnbc/default.asp
A lot of complaints on Squawk Box's show weblog:
http://spaces.msn.com/members/squawkblog/Blog/cns!1p-PUKlKTyMV0J3SU8XbuxFQ!2185.entry#comment