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!)