Needing a Star, CNBC Made One (Published 2008) (2024)

ONLY days into a new job at CNBC two and a half years ago, Erin Burnett was settling into orientation when the network decided to put her on camera.

Viewers and executives of the cable business channel took note, and within weeks, Ms. Burnett started her first big assignment, contributing to “Squawk on the Street,” a new morning program. Just weeks later she was a co-anchor of the program with Mark Haines, a veteran anchor who had been at CNBC since its founding in 1989.

A series of other high-profile assignments followed, including a 2 p.m. solo hour, appearances on NBC’s news programs and the expansion of her morning program to a second hour. Today, at 32, Ms. Burnett is the youngest person on television to anchor three hours of business news every weekday.

“She’s the ultimate growth stock,” said Jonathan Wald, CNBC’s senior vice president for business news.

Ms. Burnett’s meteoric rise is the most recent example of how television networks try to transform fresh-faced hosts into household names with all the perks — and hazards — that sudden celebrity entails. And Ms. Burnett’s “overnight success” isn’t an accident. Competing with the Internet and the fledgling Fox Business Network, CNBC has been trolling for new stars, and the network has meticulously managed and promoted Ms. Burnett’s ascent.

Because of the seismic changes roiling the media business and the huge number of choices that business news devotees now have when searching for information, anchors are no longer only news readers. Their bosses and handlers emphasize their personalities as much as their acumen in an effort to carve out niche followings.

Aware that producers sometimes push young anchors too hard, too fast — leading to notable flameouts like those of Deborah Norville, who became a “Today” co-anchor in 1990, and Ashleigh Banfield, who joined MSNBC in 2000 — CNBC says it has been careful not to give Ms. Burnett more than she could handle at each juncture.

“She is a work in progress,” Mr. Wald said. “She did not come to CNBC a fully formed business news star. And she’s evolving into a notable TV personality.”

Last week, she signed a three-year contract that will cement her status as a CNBC star and raise her profile by giving her more airtime on NBC. She also knows that no anchor has ever managed to translate a business news background into mainstream recognition. But she is determined to try.

“Money’s what makes the world go round,” she said. “Having a business niche is who I am, and it’s crucial.” But, she says, she wants to prove that she can handle “business and beyond.”

However long in the tooth — or even tired — the strategy may be, every major television network and cable channel is known for its stars. On cable, Bill O’Reilly and Shepard Smith have come to personify the Fox News Channel’s blend of rhetoric and reporting.

NBC has its own bench of on-the-air talent. On “Today,” Katie Couric came to define a generation of morning television. In the evenings, Tom Brokaw guided “NBC Nightly News” for two decades. More recently, Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer have kept “Today” in first place, and Brian Williams has stabilized the ratings for the “Nightly News.”

Because they represent programs that make hundreds of millions in revenue for their networks, the anchors usually become emblematic of a program’s success or failure. (Ms. Couric, now with CBS, has been on both sides of this particular coin.)

“Stars are not born, but people with the potential to become stars are born,” said Steve Ridge, president of television for Frank N. Magid Associates. “The key is identifying the potential early on and cultivating it by putting them in an environment to be successful.”

CNBC’s only true breakout stars thus far have been Maria Bartiromo and the “Mad Money” host, Jim Cramer. Since being tagged the “Money Honey” in the late ’90s, Ms. Bartiromo has come to define the network. But over the last three years, under the new president Mark Hoffman, CNBC has groomed a new bench of youthful correspondents and hosts, and by the barometers of television fame — airtime and promotion — Ms. Burnett has become a pivotal personality at the network.

Asked to name the network’s star, Mr. Hoffman was diplomatic. “The ensemble is the star,” he replied. With 16 hours of live programming a day, he is technically right. But Ms. Bartiromo and Ms. Burnett are the only two who anchor solo hours while the stock market is open. Their faces define CNBC.

Every rising star needs a narrative, and Ms. Burnett believes hers is about taking risks. After graduating from Williams College in 1998, she says, she spent a forgettable year as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs.

Unhappy in banking, she wrote a letter to Willow Bay, a former morning show correspondent and weekend host who had just become a co-anchor of the business news program “Moneyline” on CNN. It was a “stalker letter,” Ms. Burnett joked, but it worked: before long, she was Ms. Bay’s assistant and then a writer at CNN. But at first she didn’t want to stay in television.

“For some people, it’s love at first sight, but it wasn’t for me,” she said. Her high school classmates at St. Andrew's, a boarding school in Delaware, seemed to know her better than she knew herself: they voted her most likely to host a TV talk show in 20 years, because they thought she talked a lot. “It’s true,” she said. “I’m kind of a motor mouth.”

Ms. Burnett quit CNN and wound up writing the business plan for an Internet media start-up at Citigroup, the banking giant. When it came time to find an on-camera host, she decided to try it herself. From there she moved to Bloomberg, the news and data company that has become something of a farm team for CNBC. She started as a producer there before quickly snaring an anchor job.

As with any anchor role, looks play their part and Ms. Burnett’s striking features have complemented her hard work, smoothing her ascent. “There is an element of TV that is visual. You can’t deny that,” she says. “But you’re not going to be able to move to the next level without the passion, the contacts, the journalistic drive.”

According to Ms. Burnett, Mr. Wright sent the tape of the interview to Mr. Hoffman, the CNBC president, and suggested hiring Ms. Burnett. But by then, David Friend, a CNBC vice president, had already called. On Dec. 1, 2005, she arrived for work in CNBC’s headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

SHE arrived just as a new administration was remaking CNBC.

Mr. Hoffman, the newly installed president, wanted the network to look livelier. The CNBC brand was a “bit beat up,” he recalled. Because the channel earns north of $300 million in operating profit for NBC Universal each year, and because the News Corporation was putting together a rival network, reviving CNBC was a priority.

Wrinkles were out, and a band of correspondents, anchors and producers in their 40s and 50s gradually departed the network. Some of those who stayed — like Mr. Haines — were paired with fresh faces like Ms. Burnett.

Ms. Burnett’s rapid-fire delivery, conversational manner and laserlike blue eyes appealed to viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. In the 25-to-54-year-old demographic favored by advertisers, ratings for the 9 a.m. hour are up 113 percent since her first full month on the air. CNBC’s total day ratings are up 74 percent over the same period.

Although everyone in the business knows that the rise (and fall) of anchors is rarely a random process, Mr. Wald dismisses the idea that he and other CNBC executives consciously groomed Ms. Burnett by giving her so much airtime. “We’re not that smart,” he said.

In early 2007, Ms. Burnett and Ms. Bartiromo started taking turns appearing on “Today,” giving Ms. Burnett a new prominence within NBC Universal. She was noticed outside NBC as well: when she came to CNBC she didn’t have an agent, but last summer she signed the high-powered Creative Artists Agency agent Alan Berger — who represents Ms. Couric and Simon Cowell, among others — to guide her career.

By the time the Fox Business Network made its debut last October, CNBC was a network transformed, largely thanks to new personalities like Ms. Burnett and Mr. Cramer. Ms. Burnett has made appearances as a panelist on “Meet the Press” and as a guest on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” and is often mentioned in Page Six of The New York Post, but she rebuffs the idea that she’s a star.

“I think a star is like a movie star,” she said. “I’m in the news business. We’re trying to drive conversation and dialogue.”

She has made a few missteps. On the “Morning Joe” program on MSNBC last November, as a clip showed President Bush with two other world leaders, she referred to him as “monkey in the middle.” She now calls it a “stupid thing to say,” and says it was meant to be harmless. Some media outlets, meanwhile, have described a rivalry between Ms. Burnett and Ms. Bartiromo, with one labeling Ms. Burnett as “Maria 2.0.” “I think it doesn’t help either one of us, to be honest, because it imagines a conflict,” Ms. Burnett said. She described a “great deal of mutual respect” between the two, and said their different styles are complementary. For her part, Ms. Bartiromo called Ms. Burnett a great addition to CNBC. “She is smart, beautiful and hard-working,” Ms. Bartiromo said in an e-mail message.

Next up: whether Ms. Burnett and her handlers can broaden her appeal.

Other cable anchors have been unable to make the transition. Ms. Banfield was a prominent presence on MSNBC between the 2000 election and the war in Afghanistan, but when she tried to transfer that success to NBC, her star abruptly burned out. Alexis Glick was a high-profile host on CNBC in 2004 and 2005, but when she tried moving to “Today” as a co-host, her career skidded. She now is an anchor on Fox Business. (Ms. Glick declined to comment; Ms. Banfield couldn’t be reached for comment.)

Similarly, Ms. Burnett is popular among business news aficionados but not with a broader audience. Marketing Evaluations, the company behind the “Q scores” that measure consumer perception, started including Ms. Burnett in its twice-a-year surveys two years ago. Ms. Burnett’s “viewer familiarity” score has hovered around 6 percent. Mr. Cramer and Ms. Bartiromo, by contrast, register at 20 percent.

Mainstream news stars have much higher profiles: Bill O’Reilly was familiar to 62 percent of those surveyed. So Ms. Burnett’s backers, both inside and outside NBC, have set out to showcase her as a more mainstream news personality. Apparently seeking to forestall any competitors, CNBC decided to renew her contract six months before it was to expire. At least one broadcast network showed interest in hiring her, she said. Ms. Burnett decided that NBC Universal remained the best fit.

Her new contract makes her a fill-in co-anchor on “Weekend Today,” an assignment commonly seen as a first step in the grooming of new personalities at NBC. Ms. Burnett says she would prefer to evolve, rather than reinvent, her television persona.

MR. RIDGE, the media consultant, says TV personalities have to be careful not to force themselves into the wrong format. “It’s like an actor, really, looking for the right role,” he said. “They’re very discerning, and news anchors have to be, too.”

Asked about whether Ms. Burnett could become an evening news anchor, Mr. Wald, formerly an executive producer of “NBC Nightly News,” brushed aside the question. “I’m not sure that’s something people aspire to anymore,” he said, matter-of-factly.

Ms. Burnett concurs.

“There used to be a ‘way’ to TV success,” she said. “You’d spend time being a war correspondent and then you’d be on the fast track for the evening news. I think the new paradigm is that there is no ‘way.’”