CNBC plans to take online video more seriously in the coming months. The business news network owned by NBCUniversal is introducing more original video content to grow its online viewership and digital ad revenue.
On March 12, 2015, CNBC released a new episode of Speakeasy with John Harwood, in which the network’s titular chief Washington correspondent and show host interviews 2016 Republican presidential contender Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana. CNBC also premiered the Retire Well with Sharon Epperson series, featuring the cabler’s senior personal finance journalist.
The new content is all a part of CNBC’s goal to capitalize on its burgeoning online video efforts. According to Variety, the news network’s current video strategy involves a staff of 20 dedicated video employees who post about 200 videos a day. Roughly 50 of those clips per week are original content, a number CNBC is aiming to improve.
CNBC’s current online video plan has started to pay off, both in terms of return on investment and viewer interest. The network saw its digital ad revenue quadruple in the last three years, and CNBC Digital gained a profit in 2014 (Krim wouldn’t reveal specific numbers). And specific series within the NBCUniversal cabler’s digital slate of programming are popular with online viewers. For example, the Cramer Remix, a shortened version of journalist Jim Cramer’s Mad Money show on CNBC’s linear TV channel, raked in 1.1 million views in January 2015 alone.
However, CNBC lags behind other major news networks in terms of unique site visitors. While the NBCUniversal network had 24.2 million unique visitors in January 2015, Yahoo Finance claimed 57.8 million uniques and Forbes saw 37.7 million in the same month. Senior Vice President and General Manager of CNBC Digital Kevin Krim believes his digital team is on par with competitors, but needed to get past some logistical hurdles.
“We have a scale that is unmatched in terms of video production,” said Krim to Variety. “The problem we had was… how do we activate hundreds of CNBC journalists worldwide to do digital video?”
While CNBC looks to grow its news-based video views, its parent company NBCUniversal is focusing attention on the comedy genre. The cable network announced the new comedy pilot Cuckoo starring YouTube celebrity Flula Borg, and debuted a Saturday Night Live app. NBC also wants to release a comedy-focused subscription service, but some critics believe this is a fruitless effort as many of NBC’s comedies have consistently failed to attract viewers over the last few years (with the exception of Parks and Recreation).
CNBC, however, seems poised to do well within the financial news realm. If the new original video content it’s debuting takes off as well as its Cramer Remix series, the news network could easily see online viewership and ad revenue grow this coming year.
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