In a first for CNBC (GE), they are about to launch a game show where students from eight business schools around the US are brought together to compete on a game show.
The show dubbed "Fast Money MBA Challenge," will premiere on Aug. 1 and run once a week over a four-week period. Shows will be an hour in length. Hosting the show will be current "Fast Money" anchor Dylan Ratigan.
Eight teams of four students each will be challenged on how well they know business. It is modeled after the "GE College Bowl" game show from the 1960s. The eventual winners will split a $200,000 award which will be applied toward college costs.
Participating in the game will be teams from Columbia, UCLA, MIT, Yale, NYU, Dartmouth and the universities of Texas and Chicago.
What this is all about is the upcoming Fox Business Network. News Corp. (NWS-A) has recently shown it can draw a younger audience, as it has won the key 18-49 demo over the last couple of years on its other broadcast properties.
CNBC through doing this reveals a weakness they have, while at the same time trying to make a move to circumvent it. It does show the power of Fox in making their competitors adapt to them before they even put the network on the air. But for CNBC, they should have been doing these types of things before a competitor came along. That's the problem of success without a competitor.
The big concern is if Fox starts to blow them away in the ratings in a fairly short time, which is quite possible.
What is good about the competition is that it should make both channels better.
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