Why Bloomberg TV is getting killed by CNBC

             

I prefer reading. Not because it’s mind stimulating or that it insulates me from watching Ben Bernanke, this is not an academic issue. People are very pessimistic about watching CNBC or Bloomberg and there are good examples of why this is. In order to develop independent thinking one needs to make investments in their own growth and intellectual infrastructure. The style is clearly different between the two networks. Bloomberg TV is more like a newswire, reporting facts and figures with the odd nugget of real financial opinion. The presenters are robotic, institutionalised, lacking personality and insight. A significant amount of time is spent bouncing theories and ideas between presenters rather than key industry participants. CEO’s are lauded, rarely challenged, and it takes excessively long to delve into the key issues. Presenters nearly fall over each other and apologise profusely if they challenge consensus and that is a rare feature anyway. Viewers don’t have time for CEO teasers and long run-ups, they will switch and they have been. Charlie Rose, however, is electric.

CNBC is the prominent channel for business news. The criticisms are well publicised so there is no need to exhaust myself further in that direction. As a long-term investor short-term news is more noise rather than insight. It may validate and enhance an existing thesis or challenge it. The goal is to reduce cognitive dissonance, that being, the extent to which one harbours conflicting ideas around a particular hypothesis and the high degree to which one seeks to validate their decision despite a wide range of evidence that may disprove that, and the individual’s ignorance of that, nonetheless being aware of it. Okay, not a Webster’s definition but it can be erringly difficult to transfer thoughts from my brain to electronic paper on an early weekend morning.

CNBC gathers individuals from all spectrums, it’s pro-active and reactive and they do not procrastinate. Please bear in mind that these thoughts are generalisations, it is not an individual dissection of every facet of the two networks; humans are fickle and approach things with haste, unfortunately in some ways we need to respond to that need. The presenters on CNBC are more combative, challenging and are more educated generally in financial matters or at least more cognizant of the current financial questions and arguments. Again a generalisation. Furthermore, CNBC takes guests to task, they recall prior investment ideas and state how accurate they have been. Howard Marks’ recent investment letter ‘How Quickly They Forget’ also reminds us about the shortcomings and importance of investment memory.  One of the most memorable quotes from letter was “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme” by Mark Twain. The full investment letter can be read here.

To reflect these points further a tribute below to Mark Haines and his combative style. As many have already noted, he didn’t take to fools lightly. I will miss the randomness, his complete way-with-all with CEO’s and his upbeat attitude and clever wit which made almost any static and slightly embarrassing television moments so easy to move on from. 

Some of the key highlights:

Full article with video