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The corporate elite and deep-pocketed of America get their "Wake Up Call" every weekday from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. "Wake Up Call" on CNBC packs that time slot to the hilt. "It is
really fast-paced. It's one-stop shopping that gives the viewers everything they need to know to prepare for the business day ahead," says Senior Producer Gary Kanofsky.
Every half hour the show offers a live global report from either London or Singapore, as well as an update on stocks to watch for the coming day. Each day a guest host joins
the team - typically a senior columnist or editor from the Dow Jones newswires, the Wall Street Journal or Barron's. Also, every half hour, the show offers updates on news outside
the business world, along with weather and sports.
The audience includes high-net-worth individuals with an active interest in the market, as well as financial-service professionals and top-level execs. (Kanofsky declines to
release exact viewership numbers.)
Content/Contacts
The show's key daily bookings include stock specialists such as money managers of either private-placement or mutual-fund money, along with analysts of sectors or individual
stocks.
Guests also include CEOs, COOs and CFOs of very large publicly-traded companies. The producers want firms with at least $750 million in market capitalization, although they
will make exceptions. "We will book CEOs with companies that have a $250 million market cap, but they have to have a more compelling story," Kanofsky says. "Either their stock
needs to be up very sharply or they need to be at some seminal moment in their history."
Initial pitches can go to any one of three people: Siobhan O'Shea, 201/585-6345, [email protected]; Lori Ann Larocco, 201/346-
6743, [email protected]; or Gary Kanofsky, 201/346-6672, [email protected]. The
producers prefer email pitches.
Pitch Tips
"In general, on the corporate side, for a pitch to be effective it needs to be about some news-making event in the life of that company," says Kanofsky. "Earnings are
considered a key news-making event, but so is a new product launch, or a business transaction such as a merger deal or some other corporate transaction that the company thinks
will help it in significant ways. Participation at a conference where they will be speaking and giving an outlook on their industry is certainly a good pitch."
Do: Make it brief and to the point.
Don't: Assume. "The most insulting thing of all is when someone calls you and says, 'My guy is going to be in town and we'd like to schedule an interview.' That works for Bill
Gates. It doesn't work for anyone else."
Comments
"Pitches need to have real substance and real ideas. It is not like the old days where every stock was moving in the right direction and you could buy anything feeling that it
was going to go up. So it is a more challenging environment for publicists."
Is this the Enron effect? "No, this is more than Enron," he says. "It is kind of like 'The Perfect Storm.' You had a slowdown in the economy that lasted for a good long time.
You had the collapse of tech stocks. Then on top of that comes Enron/Anderson. So you have a situation where investors feel like they have to be doubly cautious."
In The Pipeline
The producers want stories about alternative investing ideas. Pitches about investments like real estate or other alternatives to individual stocks are a good bet for the
show.
"Right now the stock market has been moving sideways for a while," Kanofsky says. "People are looking for real meaningful opportunities to invest, and yet our viewers are a lot
more guarded and a lot more suspicious."
So send pitches about companies that are defying the market trends: "Companies or mutual funds that are star performers, the hidden jewels of the market -- those are very
strong pitches right now."