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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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041789
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1990-09-17
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VIDEO, Page 69NBC Gets Down to BusinessThe network tries to fill a niche in cable news
Fade in to a row of toilet stalls in a men's room. While
disembodied voices talk about the day's business events, the camera
pans across a row of feet with trousers and underwear scrunched
down around them. Says the announcer: "There's a better place where
executives can go for fast-breaking business news."
Its programming may not be as irreverent (some might say
tasteless) as its promotional ads, but the Consumer News & Business
Channel, a cable service that will be launched next week by NBC,
is causing plenty of stir. The channel will compete directly with
cable's chief business-news outlet, the Financial News Network
(FNN). But some in the cable industry believe that CNBC has a much
bigger rival in its sights: Ted Turner's cable news giant, CNN.
Emanating from a new 40,000-sq.-ft. studio facility in Fort
Lee, N.J., CNBC's offerings will have as a centerpiece a daytime
"money wheel": a continuous half-hour cycle of business headlines,
market reports, consumer news and other business-related items. In
the evenings, however, the programming will range more widely. John
McLaughlin, host of the syndicated McLaughlin Group, will do an
hour-long talk show with such guests as Malcolm Forbes, Henry
Kissinger and Phil Donahue. Dick Cavett has been signed as host of
another nightly interview program; his first week's guests will
include Jimmy Breslin and Linda Ellerbee. Also on the
after-business-hours schedule: Smart Money, a consumer show with
husband-wife authors Ken and Daria Dolan as hosts, and Media Beat,
a program on media business. Weekend fare will go even further
afield, including a Sunday-morning children's show.
CNBC officials deny that they are developing a general-news
channel to challenge CNN. "It will be confined to business and
consumer news," says CNBC President Michael Eskridge, who oversaw
NBC's Summer Olympics coverage last year. "We think that's an area
that is underserved." CNBC's contracts with cable systems, he
points out, stipulate that the network must stay within its
business-news charter; if it expands, the systems can drop it.
Initially, CNBC officials report, the channel will reach 13
million cable homes -- a respectable starting figure, though
substantially lower than either FNN (32 million) or CNN (50
million). Costs are expected to top $60 million before the channel
begins operating in the black. (Revenues will come from advertising
and a basic charge to cable systems of 7 cents per subscriber.)
Most cable analysts, however, give top-rated NBC and its
well-heeled corporate parent, General Electric, a good shot at
making the- service a success.
The waters could be treacherous. The channel space on cable
systems is limited, and in most areas CNBC would have to supplant
another service to win a spot on the dial. (FNN officials say their
channel has been dropped by only a few systems to make room for
CNBC.) In addition, the channel's programming, aimed at both
hard-core market watchers and ordinary consumers, could be an
uneasy mix. Then too there is Ted Turner to deal with. The CNN
founder has already fired one loud volley at the competition,
denouncing NBC executives as "bozos" and claiming that they started
the channel only after failing to "stifle" the competition by
buying CNN, a proposed deal that fell through a few years ago.
Cable's Captain Outrageous vs. broadcasting's No. 1 network: sounds
like a juicy business story for CNBC.