On the week of aprox. December 16th, 2005, CNBC had rolled out a new brand that replaced the fun, flirty, edgy, aggressive package that was used when they relocated from Fort Lee to Englewood Cliffs, N.J. CNBC had been a close tie to Pyburn Films, a motion graphics design firm. They had done promos for CNBC before, and their previous graphics package before they moved. Whoever at CNBC was running promotions, apparently loves blue. Dark blue. Sick blue. Sick Building Syndrome Blue.
Before we go to late 2005 (of which I had watched a lot that first week of it’s new look because I believe I caught the flu, one of two instances before I caught COVID a year ago to the day.)
When Kelly Evans moved to do middays, CNBC tweaked their midday shows, to cut Power Lunch down to an hour to 2:00 pm ET and added The Exchange. The program launched in January of 2019. While NewscastStudio has the earliest recording (airing the first week of that month) I was a bit late. I immediately started to record the open again (because of the DVR) because I heard that sound after Sully handed off.
That’s what they in the biz, sonic branding. The musical or auditoral branding that makes you stand out from the competition.
This was obviously the 2003 CNBC theme composed by 615 Music’s then duo Tom Snider and Randy Wachtler. The music had various cuts that were used in various dayparts, obviously this theme was well known for Street Signs, that was on a programming hiatus between February 2002 to late 2003, because Business Center was still a thing on CNBC after the move to Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey in October of 2003 – of which this theme originated as.
With one view shy of 1,111 total views, with 6 likes, and a few comments, the people who had seen my lo-fi capture are not your modern average CNBC viewers, they are loyalists and probably have shared similar sentiments of the direction the CNBC branding, imaging has gone. Dark. Modern. Post realistic. Even if you argue CNBC’s move in 2003 was considered modern, it wasn’t departing into abstract hell, it had flash, and energy, of which the 615 theme package captured. Prior to The Exchange, the theme was used from October 2003 to December 2005. Ironically the two succeeding theme packages have outlived any other theme or graphics package times 2 (the Rampage Music NY from December 2005 to October 2014 and the Man Made package from latter date to present, going on 8 years!)
This upfront promo for advertisers and cable systems was shot on my last day of being 11 years old. This has nothing to do with news promotions per se, but all the songs used in the upfront was the soundtrack to my preteen years. Funny how Pyburn folks saw the potential of Jim Cramer (who was still a guest host on Squawk) and Joe looking like a stud in the turtle neck (how can you not man crush on him?)
I recommend people to take a couple hours to watch this interesting video in June of last year, in the midst of the pandemic. This Zoom panel features a mix of network and O&O execs, mostly on the engineering and operations. Stacy Brady had the best comment in the session, something like disaster recovery didn’t mean people going down.
ABC is also an interesting discussion; as they had issues “getting communications out of the building” like push button intercoms and IFB earpieces. This explains why The View forced the ladies to talk one at a time.
Of course the show stopper started in the beginning, with the head of the Fox O&Os playing an internal video from WTXF in Philly and how the station there handled COVID19, starring the infamous Mike Jerrick!
Unfortunately, the rep from B&H didn’t make it; which would’ve been interesting to see the prosumer vendor respond to large demands, for the broadcasters. Typically live streamer types use B&H as their primary vendor. In fact WABC-TV found a Black Magic Design Web Presenter device that helped aid production, that was apparently lying around.
