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December 3, 2006

Thoughts on the New CNBC Site

The new CNBC site is up (disclaimers below) and it's a nice change: Cleaner, brighter, and with much more compelling content from that other CNBC, the television network of the same name.

The biggest two questions most people will have are, of course, is streaming CNBC available, and if so is it free? Yes and no. Yes, "3-8 hours daily of live programming" (no, I'm not sure yet what the means either), as is a live stream of CNBC's core Business Day programming. The catch: Archival video, as well as live Business Day programming, requires a $9.95 subscription to "CNBC Plus".

My biggest beefs so far:

1) Not having seen the live video, I have no idea as to its quality, but I do know that it looks like they want to keep it embedded in a page. I prefer having an unadorned player, but that's maybe just me.

2) No RSS feeds. I want to able to subscribe to the upcoming guests/topics via RSS. I don't want to have to remember to check the live listing, only then to find out I missed someone I wanted to see.

3) The price. While $9.95 a month is fair enough, I wonder how many people will subscribe, versus, say, continuing to watch free Bloomberg TV online.  This will be interesting to follow.

obDisclaimer: I'm a fairly regular guest on CNBC, so maybe I'm pulling my punches. Or overdoing the criticism. Or something.

Update: I edited this piece fairly extensively after seeing the CNBC release tonight, as opposed to just scanning the site. The first version of this post had a number of ... errors.

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