Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Take that! Merrill pulls plug on CNBC

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 03:10:18 -0500

Larry,

See what you did now! And they say I speak my mind?

Remember "They Love Us, They Hate Us----They Hate Us, They Love Us"..........you would not
be doing your job if they did not.

I still watch on the Mobile Broadband Service or Cycom. Keep the guns blazing!
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Take that! Merrill pulls plug on CNBC

Angry at the way the firm has been portrayed by CNBC commentators, Merrill Lynch will
no longer allow its brokerage operations employees to watch the network at their desks.
Instead, they will watch Bloomberg Television. The company says that the switch was
prompted by angry brokers. Apparently, they grew tired of hearing Lawrence Kudlow and
James Cramer, co-hosts of an evening talk show, criticize the company. Among Merrill's
most vocal critics, they have called for the resignations of top executives.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 11, 2003

Brokerage Firm Turns Off CNBC

By PATRICK McGEEHAN

    R esponding to the anger of some of its employees over how CNBC has depicted the firm,
Merrill Lynch & Company is
     changing channels for more than 20,000 of them.

Starting next week, employees of Merrill's brokerage operation, the biggest in the nation,
will no longer be able to watch CNBC
on their desktop computers. Instead, the firm will provide Bloomberg Television, broadcast
by Bloomberg L.P., the company
founded by New York's mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg.

Merrill employees said the switch was spurred, at least in part, by the reactions of some
of Merrill's 14,000 brokers and some
executives to what has been said about the company by CNBC commentators. Lawrence Kudlow
and James J. Cramer, the
co-hosts of an evening talk show, have been among the firm's harshest critics.

Mr. Kudlow has called for the resignations of its chairman, David H. Komansky, and its
chief executive, E. Stanley O'Neal. Mr.
Cramer, who also writes columns for TheStreet.com, a financial Web site he co-founded, has
repeatedly discussed the
possibility that Merrill might fail because of its involvement with Enron. Merrill said
last month that it had agreed to pay $80
million to end an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into two unusual
transactions with Enron in 1999.

James Wiggins, a Merrill spokesman, attributed the desire for change to the brokers and
said the switch would not affect what
other employees, like stock traders and investment bankers, watch.

"This is in response to popular demand," Mr. Wiggins said. "Our financial advisers have
asked for a different video feed on their
desktops."

Dropping CNBC for a competitor would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. One of
the first cable channels to
concentrate on financial news, CNBC was the center stage in the bull market of the 1990's,
the favorite venue of dot-com chief
executives and the analysts who recommended their stocks.

But CNBC's audience has shrunk since then, and the network has been criticized for helping
to inflate the technology-stock
bubble that burst three years ago. Indeed, Bloomberg executives contend that their
programming — essentially nonstop
commentary on financial markets and corporate developments — is more popular than CNBC's.

Bloomberg's biggest handicap is that it is available 24 hours only on digital cable TV
systems, which are more expensive than
standard cable service and not available everywhere. The channel is shown nationwide from
5 a.m. to 8 a.m. weekdays on the
USA Network.

During the first two hours of that broadcast, Bloomberg draws a larger audience than does
CNBC: averaging 99,000
households compared with 53,000 for CNBC, according to Bloomberg. But at 7 a.m., when CNBC
starts showing its main
morning program, "Squawk Box," the situation changes. From 7 a.m. to 8 a.m., CNBC is
watched in 93,000 households, on
average, compared with 67,000 for Bloomberg.

"Our TV is for people that can't not watch," said David Wachtel, director of Bloomberg
Media. "There's no question that our
product is designed for the serious professional." But, he added, "The TV that's for the
professional is for everbody."

A CNBC spokeswoman, Amy Zelvin, declined to comment and said that neither Mr. Kudlow nor
Mr. Cramer would comment.

Bloomberg's programming will be piped directly to the brokers' computers, about 30,000
screens worldwide. The brokers will
be able to monitor the television feed in a corner of the screen while studying clients'
accounts or researching investments.

Mr. Wiggins said that Merrill would pay less for Bloomberg's service than it has paid for
CNBC's, but he said that cost was only
one of several reasons for the change.

Merrill is a passive, minority investor in Bloomberg L.P., but Mr. Wiggins said that stake
did not affect the decision. Merrill
recently chose one of Bloomberg's competitors, Thomson Financial, to provide a new
computer system for its brokers.
Bloomberg TV will be available on that system when Merrill starts installing it later this
year, Mr. Wiggins said.

Not all Wall Street firms choose a single TV feed for their brokers. Morgan Stanley, which
has about 12,000 brokers, offers
them a choice of four channels: CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN and CNNfn. One Morgan Stanley
employee said he had been
surprised to see how many of the firm's brokers chose to watch Bloomberg over the other
channels.

Neither Smith Barney nor UBS PaineWebber provides a TV feed to its brokers' computers,
representatives for those firms said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/business/11WALL.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
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