CNBC will simulcast 11 WNBA games because nothing says professional basketball like a network that spent two decades teaching retirees how to panic-sell during commercial breaks.
The business news network spun out from Comcast and immediately decided its post-divorce identity would be "sports but for people who pronounce it 'portfolio.'" Eleven games. Not ten. Not twelve. Eleven. Someone in a conference room did the math on affluent eyeballs per contested layup and landed on eleven.
The WNBA gets exposure to an audience that watches CNBC, which means an audience that thinks a chart with two lines going different directions is entertainment. These are people who get excited about Fed minutes. They believe Jim Cramer is a thought leader. They own shares of companies they cannot pronounce. Now they get basketball.
CNBC's programming strategy has always been "what if we made numbers louder." Now it's "what if we made numbers louder but also there's a jump shot." The network built its brand on ticker symbols scrolling past at seizure-inducing speeds while men in ties yelled about basis points. Adding basketball does not make that less insane. It makes it more insane, which is the only honest move left.
The press release calls this "a new chapter" for CNBC, as if chapters are things that happen to cable networks instead of controlled descents into irrelevance. A new chapter would be admitting that financial news has the predictive power of a coin flip covered in motor oil. This is not a new chapter. This is the same chapter with a basketball in it.
Somewhere a retail trader will watch a WNBA game on CNBC, see a ticker at the bottom showing his portfolio down 40%, and think the problem is he didn't buy enough.
Photo by RIKI ISHIUCHI on Unsplash
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