CNBC

Jim Ackerman, a one-time “Dateline NBC” and “Today” show producer who’s been developing series at VH1 for the past several years, is returning to NBC as Senior Vice President of primetime alternative programming at CNBC.

This is a new role at CNBC, which appears to want to break out of the traditional long-form business programming which makes up primetime — corporate portraits, fraud and stories of business tycoons — and add what has become a staple of cable and broadcast TV: reality shows. Ackerman will report directly to CNBC president Mark Hoffman.

“Jim will be responsible for CNBC’s strategy, development and production of new formats, including reality for our networks,” writes Hoffman in a note to staff.

While at VH1 Ackerman oversaw development of shows including “Best Week Ever,” “Celebrity Fit Club,” and “Race-o-Rama.”

In his career, Ackerman has developed projects for Buena Vista, Telepictures, Fox News and HBO and was EP of Lifetime’s “The Jane Pratt Show.” In the 1990s, he worked at CBS News as senior broadcast producer of “CBS This Morning.”

Hoffman’s note after the jump…

Read more

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

Wall Street Journal reporter Kelly Evans is jumping to CNBC. Kelly, who joins CNBC Feb. 27, will be based in London, initially.

Evans hosts the daily “News Hub” program on WSJ.com and writes The Journal‘s “Ahead of the Tape” column. She has been a frequent guest on WSJ’s corporate sibling Fox Business Network as well as on CNBC. Kelly joined The Journal in 2007 covering real estate and economics.

The news was first speculated by the website JaneDough.

Suze Orman did a big press splash a couple weeks ago promoting her new show on OWN as well as the launch of her own prepaid debit card: The Approved Card. It’s the latter that continues to get the headlines, and not in a good way.

Personal finance experts and reporters who cover the beat charge, simply, that the card is not worth it, and she risks damaging her brand in the process. “In hawking your own financial products, you throw our trust out the window,” wrote the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Jim Gallagher. Reuters columnist John Wasik thinks, “there’s something troubling about an avowed consumer advocate who plugs a product that charges $3 ‘maintenance’ fees (the first month’s fee is waived) and even restricts deposits.” Orman’s rival on Fox Business Network, Gerri Willis has done several segments on the card and has tried to get Orman on her show to talk about it. The Orman camp’s response:

“[You've done three segments] without any input from Suze or The Approved Card team. At this point we will just leave it there and respectfully decline your offer to appear.”

 

During the handoff from “Squawk Box” to “Squawk on the Street” this morning, CNBCers Joe Kernen, Becky Quick, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Carl Quintanilla and Melissa Lee were chatting about the new CNBC set at the New York Stock Exchange, which Alex got a look at Wednesday. And it was that story which gave Kernen his first look at the set:

Quintanilla: Have you been down here yet to see it in person?
Kernen: No. I saw it on TVNewser.
Lee: Your source for news about CNBC is TVNewser?
Kernen: That’s where I saw it. I’m too honest.

Not too honest, Joe. Just honest enough.

In mid-to-late February, CNBC will formally unveil a new set on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The location of the set (in the middle of the floor in a spot formerly occupied by trading booth #9) and the size of it (12 feet wide, 23 feet long, 12 feet high, 16,000 pounds), are unprecedented for a financial news outlet.

“We love buzz, and every morning they are going to ring the bell up in that balcony, it will be like broadcasting from Times Square, where every day is New Years Eve,” CNBC anchor Carl Quintanilla told us on the NYSE trading floor.

Indeed, the set is no more than 10 feet from where the opening and closing bells are rung, directly underneath the balcony that viewers routinely see on cable news (see below).

CNBC will be keeping its space on a separate balcony overlooking the trading floor, where it will be used primarily by producers and technicians, who can control small robotic cameras that will be mounted to a custom track system on the new set. Quintanilla says that being at ground-level will be a significant upgrade to the current setup.

“The balcony has been a great home, [Mark] Haines made it work, but sometimes we feel like Statler and Waldorf from the ‘Muppet Show,’ commenting from the balcony,” Quintanilla says. “Here [motions to the set] you are in arms reach of the traders making markets and stocks, it is as close as you can get.”

Read more

Following up on a story from yesterday, CNBC’s Eamon Javers has filed an update to his reporting on whether or not Bain & Company advised Obama administration officials on the U.S. automaker bailout in 2009. The result: they did.

We’ll try to break it down:

• Thursday: On CNBC.com Javers reports Bain & Company advised admin officials working on the auto bailout; Bain & Company spokesman calls story “factually incorrect” and demands an “immediate retraction”

• Friday: CNBC.com issues correction, contacts Inspector General’s office

• Monday: Federal holiday, nothing happens.

• Tuesday: Spokesman for Bain & Company confirms the discussion occurred

• Wednesday: CNBC.com updates story

And why, you ask, does any of this matter? I suppose it’s because presidential candidate Mitt Romney is a former CEO of Bain & Company, where he worked both before and after founding Bain Capital. He left Bain & Co. in 1992, when, incidentally, U.S automakers were also not doing so hot, but nowhere near a government bailout. (All research done without Wikipedia).

Marketwatch.com’s Jon Friedman wonders if a spate of recent CNBC departures is creating “a brain drain” at the #1 business network. Friedman points out that while several have left, the network has held on to the likes of Maria Bartiromo, Jim Cramer and Joe Kernen, among others.

Notably, CNBC announced in late 2009 the hiring of Wall Street Journal news executive Nik Deogun to be its managing editor. Before Deogun arrived, CNBC on-air journalists seemed to preen first and try to break news second. Deogun has helped dial down the noise.

And while CNBC exists as brand first, self second, Friedman says too much outflow can cause a drought:

Broadcast journalism is littered with the stories of networks that believed their press clippings. They lost top-flight employees and eventually deteriorated. CNBC shouldn’t get too cocky.

After poring over some government documents, CNBC’s Eamon Javers reported that Bain & Company, Mitt Romney‘s former firm, was one of the consulting companies that took part in the auto bailout. Javers’ CNBC.com report Thursday seemed like a well-timed piece of information since Romney had been getting broadsided by GOP rivals for his role at Bain.
By Thursday evening, the story was being reported on political websites. Friday morning it was referenced on “Squawk Box.” But just a few hours later, Javers had written this retraction on CNBC.com:

Bain & Co. said it has no connection to the “Bain Consulting” firm referenced in government documents.

That’s when this all started getting attention from the media-on-media sites. First on Business Insider, and by Saturday morning in the Z on TV column in the Baltimore Sun: “News organizations are not supposed to be the source of dangerously wrong information,” writes David Zurawik, “they

Read more

Fox Business Network anchor Stuart Varney talks to the Atlantic Wire about what he reads to prepare for his daily show, “Varney & Co.” Varney says he keeps his reading habits simple:

I try to stay out of the weeds. On television, jargon is the kiss of death. The second you start talking about the Federal Reserve and QE3 you’ve lost your audience. I mean, how many people really know what the Federal Reserve is and does? Far fewer people know what QE3 is. That’s why you’ll never hear me say, “The yield on the 10 year bond is X or Y percent.” Instead, I’ll tell a general audience that Italians are having trouble borrowing money and that’s how you pull them in. One of the differences between CNBC and Fox Business is we’re going after a different market. We’re expanding beyond traders to a broader audience while staying on subjects that are related to money and investing.

Perhaps Becky Quick‘s nickname should be the “Business Whisperer”?  And do we know what she did last summer?

What TVNewser is hinting at - ever so cleverly - is that it struck us just the other day: Quick bears a striking resemblance to actress Jennifer Love Hewitt. From their hair to the shape of their faces, well, we’re just sayin’.

Quick, by the way, has been back on the airwaves now since November after taking maternity leave for the birth of her baby boy in August.

So what do you think - is Becky Quick a doppelganger for JLH?