SPN, the launch of CNBC, and early years (1979–1993) CNBC's roots date back to the founding of the
Satellite Program Network (SPN) on July 30, 1979, which showed a low-budget mix of old movies and instructional and entertainment programs. The channel later changed its name to Tempo Television. After initially signing a letter of intent to acquire Tempo,
NBC opted for a deal to lease the channel's
transponder in June 1988. On this platform, and under the guidance of
Tom Rogers, the channel was relaunched on April 17, 1989, as the
Consumer News and Business Channel, with
Neil Cavuto anchoring this first broadcast. NBC and
Cablevision initially operated CNBC as a 50–50
joint venture, and it was headquartered in
Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Sue Herera and Scott Cohn joined CNBC at its inception. Following the 1991 bankruptcy of the competing
Financial News Network (FNN), NBC acquired and merged FNN into CNBC, while also acquiring Cablevision's stake in CNBC to grant it full ownership. In addition to its U.S. operations, CNBC operates the
Europe and
Asia branches and is involved in other international affiliates via joint ventures and franchise arrangements. In 2023, CNBC had higher total day and primetime viewership than its chief rival,
Fox Business, but finished behind Fox in trading day viewership. CNBC had considerable difficulty getting cable carriage at first, as many providers were skeptical of placing it alongside the longer-established
Financial News Network. By the winter of 1990, CNBC was in only 17 million homes—less than half of FNN's potential reach—despite the size of NBC, its parent. After an
accounting scandal, FNN filed for
bankruptcy protection on March 2, 1991, and put itself up for sale. After a bidding war with a
Dow Jones & Company–
Westinghouse Broadcasting consortium, CNBC was awarded FNN by a bankruptcy judge for $154.3 million on May 21, 1991, and merged the two operations. CNBC hired around 60 of FNN's 300-person workforce, including
Joe Kernen, who is still with the channel. Other former FNN workers were hired by
Bloomberg Television. The deal expanded the network's distribution to over 40 million homes, thereby more than doubling its potential audience. CNBC adopted many elements of FNN's on-air presentation, branding its daytime programming as "CNBC/FNN Daytime" until 1992. CNBC incorporated several features from FNN's on-air ticker into its own.
Expansion (1993–2013) Roger Ailes was hired as the president of CNBC in August 1993, tasked by NBC CEO
Bob Wright with turning around the struggling network. Ailes resigned in January 1996 due to disagreements with management, including the decision by NBC management to form a joint venture with
Microsoft that included the rebrand of "
America's Talking" as
MSNBC. Under the leadership of Ailes, annual revenue at CNBC rose from $43 million to $110 million. In June 1995, CNBC launched the
Hong Kong–based
CNBC Asia, and
CNBC Europe, headquartered in
London, in March 1996. . In December 1997, CNBC formed a strategic alliance with Dow Jones, including content sharing with
Dow Jones Newswires,
The Wall Street Journal,
MarketWatch, and ''
Barron's'' and the rebranding of the channel as "a service of NBC and Dow Jones." As part of the agreement, Dow Jones merged their competing business news channels—London-based European Business News and Singapore-based
Asia Business News—into CNBC Europe and CNBC Asia, respectively, with CNBC shutting down its Hong Kong–based operation and relocating the new CNBC Asia to ABN's Singapore studios. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, CNBC's ratings increased sharply along with the stock market, often beating those of
CNN during market hours. The highest daytime viewership of the network in 2000 was 343,000. However, following the burst of the
dot-com bubble, CNBC experienced a decline in its viewing figures. In 2002, CNBC's ratings fell 44% and were down another 5% in 2003. The network's ratings steadily fell until bottoming in Q1 2005, with an average viewership of 134,000 during the day. From 2001 to 2006, the CNBC website was operated by
MSN. In August 2003, CNBC signed a deal to provide weather content from
AccuWeather. In October 2003, CNBC moved its world
headquarters from Fort Lee (which became the new home of
Telemundo flagship station
WNJU) to a new
digital video production studio in
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. NBC Universal reacquired full control of loss-making CNBC Europe and CNBC Asia from Dow Jones at the end of 2005. The licensing agreement between Dow and CNBC U.S. remained intact until it expired in 2012. CNBC reported annual revenues of $510 million in 2006. In September 2006, CNBC launched the FTSE CNBC Global 300
stock market index in conjunction with
FTSE Group. The index includes the fifteen largest companies from each of the sectors of the
Industry Classification Benchmark as well as the thirty largest companies from
emerging markets. Profits at CNBC exceeded $333 million in 2007, making CNBC the second most profitable of NBC Universal's thirteen cable channels in the United States, behind only the
USA Network.
CNBC Africa was launched on June 1, 2007. On October 22, 2007, CNBC introduced the "CNBC Investor Network," a network of
webcams stationed in the operating departments of various independent financial institutions across the United States, allowing traders to be interviewed instantaneously as news breaks. In December 2007, CNBC formed a content partnership with
Yahoo! Finance. In January 2008, CNBC formed a content partnership with
The New York Times, which was seen as an attempt by both parties to take on increased competition from News Corporation. In May 2008, CNBC formed a content partnership with
AOL. Average daytime viewership (6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.) reached a seven-year high of 310,000 viewers in the first quarter of 2008. Ratings plummeted in 2009 as the network aired bad economic news resulting from the
Great Recession. In January 2010, the launch of the
Korean language channel
SBS-CNBC marked the fifteenth CNBC-branded channel worldwide. In July 2010, BT signed a five-year contract with CNBC Europe to distribute content from its London headquarters to sister sites in Europe and the US. In 2011, CNBC won an award at the
International Broadcasting Convention for its CNBC 4D: Interactive motion tracking that allows CNBC presenters to interact with 3D graphics, using technology from Unreel, Brainstorm, and Motion Analysis. In June 2012, CNBC expanded its partnership with Yahoo! Finance to reach more online viewers. That month, CNBC.com had 6.5 million unique visitors in the United States, while Yahoo! Finance had 37.5 million.
Rise in competition (2013–2024) In 2013, host
Maria Bartiromo left CNBC for
Fox Business in part because Fox offered her $5–6 million per year compared to the $4 million per year that she made at CNBC. Also that year, CNBC took over production of the popular public television program
Nightly Business Report from NBR Worldwide, a subsidiary of Atalaya Global Management. The company publishes annual lists, including the CNBC Disruptor 50 since 2013 and the CNBC25 since 2014. On January 6, 2015, CNBC changed the way it calculates ratings, switching from
Nielsen ratings to a system by Cogent Research to calculate the viewership of its business day programming by surveying financial advisers and investors, with the goal of providing a more accurate measurement of the network's out-of-home viewership; Nielsen is still used to track the viewership of its entertainment programming. In October 2015, a
Republican Party candidates debate hosted by CNBC was seen by 14 million viewers—the highest viewership of a CNBC program to date. On January 10, 2016, CNBC announced a partnership with Indonesian broadcaster
Trans Media to form
CNBC Indonesia. By 2017, Fox Business had overtaken CNBC as the most watched business news network during the day. CNBC's online video operations generated an all-time high of 1.92 billion total digital video starts across platforms in 2020. In 2020, CNBC hired former
Fox News Channel anchor
Shepard Smith to host a new evening newscast on the channel,
The News with Shepard Smith, which premiered that September. It was positioned as an
objective, "fact-based" national newscast. In September 2021, CNBC signed a new multi-platform deal with
Jim Cramer; in addition to his existing television roles, the agreement includes the co-development of live events and digital content through his company Cramer Media (replacing his previous arrangement with
TheStreet, which Cramer had co-founded and sold to The Arena Group in 2019), including a direct-to-consumer subscription service. In January 2022, the subscription service launched as the "CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer," which includes commentaries, stock picks, and monthly online meetings. The service operates alongside another CNBC subscription service, "CNBC Pro," which similarly provides exclusive content and
over-the-top streaming of CNBC's networks. In August 2022, Mark Hoffman stepped down as president of CNBC after 17 years at the network, being succeeded by NBCUniversal president of global advertising and partnerships KC Sullivan. Under Sullivan, the network began to refocus its programming to broaden appeal to its core business audience, including a promise of more business-related documentaries in primetime, and cancelling the low-rated
The News with Shepard Smith in November 2022 in favor of the new financial news program
Last Call with
Brian Sullivan, which premiered in January 2023, On December 11, 2023, CNBC underwent a major rebranding, updating its logo for the first time since 1996 (adopting the updated
NBC logo and corporate typeface introduced a year prior in the process), and revamping its on-air graphics with a simpler
flat design. The two-tiered stock ticker CNBC had historically used was replaced with a single scroll, with major indices now displayed in a strip below the stock ticker. In March 2024, CNBC announced plans to add its personal finance brand "Make It" to weekend programming. Make It offers personal finance tips, career guidance, and other forms of advice-based content to consumers. According to CNBC, Make It-branded content (which launched in 2016) forms CNBC.com’s largest vertical. In November 2024, a Brazilian affiliate known as
Times Brasil launched as CNBC's first local franchise in South America. It was founded by Douglas Tavolaro, who had originally founded
CNN Brasil.
Spin-off from NBCUniversal (2024–present) . On November 20, 2024, NBCUniversal announced its intent to spin off most of its cable networks, including CNBC, as a new publicly traded company controlled by Comcast shareholders, later known as
Versant. CNBC had largely operated autonomously from NBC News until
Cesar Conde became head of the
NBCUniversal News Group in 2020, after which the network began to engage in some resource sharing with the division. In 2025, CNBC launched a new subscription streaming platform known as CNBC+, which offers live and on-demand streaming of CNBC and CNBC World programming. Bundles of the service with CNBC Pro and an "all-access" tier with CNBC Investing Club are also available. Due to the spin-off, it was announced on August 18, 2025, that CNBC would undergo a rebranding to reduce its ties to the NBC brand. The channel would retain the "CNBC" name (unlike sister network
MSNBC, which underwent a more significant rebrand to "MS NOW"), but adopt a new logo excluding the NBC peacock symbol. Versant head Mark Lazarus acknowledged that CNBC would be able to keep its name since it was originally an initialism for "Consumer News and Business Channel"; Versant still had to obtain a trademark license from NBCUniversal to continue using "NBC" as part of CNBC's name. In October 2025, both CNBC and MSNBC began the process of formally separating themselves from NBC News, ahead of the completion of the divestment in 2026. CNBC unveiled its new logo in December 2025, which took effect on-air on December 13; it is designed around motifs originally introduced in the 2023 rebranding (including its neon blue corporate color,
right triangle icons, and its associated on-air graphics—which were maintained with the rebranding), while also including visual references to CNBC's original wordmark (including tight
kerning on the "N" and "B," albeit connected by a right triangle in
negative space). ==Physical stores==