NBC Gets Down to Business

By Richard Zoglin

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.

With reporting by William Tynan/Fort Lee