CNBC Asia will air 20 hours more of live programming from the end
of this month, in response to a global demand for more business and
financial news from Asia.
Executives at CNBC Asia said the changes were made to strengthen its
positioning as a business and financial news channel, differentiate
itself from the other 'news' channels, and attract more viewers and
advertisers.
"From our research and individual comments gathered from Europe, USA and
Asia, viewers want more coverage of the Asian markets," said Scott
Goodfellow, acting president for CNBC Asia.
"People usually group CNBC, CNN, BBC and Channel NewsAsia together as
news channels, and compare us to (the other channels), but we do not
view ourselves as a news channel.
"There are people who tune in not looking for any big news but to pick
up little things - news items that their business is associated with and
that can influence their business decisions. These people are a big
category," he explained.
To tap in on this category of viewers, CNBC will deliver more live
reports from regional exchanges, in-depth analyses and live interviews,
increasing the hours of many of its benchmark programmes, such as
PowerLunch, Squawk Box and Market Watch, to a weekly total of 50 hours
in live coverage.
A new programme called New Company - a showcase of how brick and mortar
companies adapt to the digital business environment - will also be
launched.
Chris Blackman, vice president of news programming, said CNBC Asia
intends to be "the most important channel bar none for those needing
business development news, and we make it available to them whenever
they need and want it."
Over the past 12 months, CNBC has been trying to position itself as a
channel in its own category. Last year, the channel began focusing on
producing and airing local channels through joint-ventures in several
markets, with Nikkei-CNBC and CNBC India now reaching the most number of
viewers in the region, and CNBC Australia becoming increasingly
important as a source of locally-produced programmes for the rest of
Asia.
Mr Blackman said that it also wanted to inject more spontaneity and
excitement in programmes, but maintained that CNBC is not abandoning the
coverage of 'news' events. "For any news story that has a breaking
impact, we report how it relates to the impact on markets," he said,
adding that the message they want to convey to those demanding business
news is "this is real-time news as they break on air". A series of
30-second TVCs will air on CNBC and other channels - Discovery, AXN, MTV
and Hallmark - and print ads have started running in global and regional
business and financial magazines.
According to Mark Froude, VP and director of international sales, the
network has seen major business growth in recent years; advertising
revenue is up 80 per cent and clients have doubled, while revenues have
tripled since the Asian monetary crisis.
Mr Froude said CNBC Asia would focus on financial and business clients
for the next 12 months, although "it is clear to us that the key aspect
in advertising development are new economy type clients".
CNBC Asia derives 80 per cent of its revenues from advertisers, which
include Nokia, Credit Suisse, Singapore Airlines and Allianze AG.
