Through the multiyear agreement, MSN will become the online home for the new merged site, CNBC MoneyCentral, combining the award-winning personal finance offering from MSN with content from the most popular financial cable news network in the world.
Building on the success of the MSNBC joint venture created by Microsoft and NBC in 1995, this new agreement brings together CNBC’s powerful financial industry brand and programming expertise with Microsoft’s extensive online distribution and technology experience. The two sites combined will have a powerful reach extending to approximately 16 million monthly unique visitors. The new site can be reached at http://www.cnbc.com/ or http://www.moneycentral.msn.com/, or by visiting MSN.
MSN MoneyCentral has been praised by Barron’s, Forbes and Money magazine for having the best personal finance site on the Internet. Likewise, CNBC is widely recognized as the broadcast leader in investing news and analysis, and since its inception CNBC.com has been the stickiest financial site on the Web. CNBC MoneyCentral will provide consumers with all of the sophisticated software services from the MSN MoneyCentral online personal finance service, such as tools to manage their portfolio, research companies and screen stocks, as well as highly regarded content from CNBC.com, including Stocks to Watch, Guest List, Stock Picks, Sector Watch and portfolio-specific CNBC-TV guest alerts.
Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies will prominently promote the new site across the CNBC cable channel, which reaches 79 million homes daily, and the MSN network of Internet services, with more than 230 million visitors per month. Throughout the daily broadcast, CNBC television will send its viewers to the joint site for in-depth commentary, investing news and a wealth of personal financial tools.
The new site is expected to launch this summer. Like MSNBC.com, the site will operate from Microsoft’s offices, with the editorial team split between Fort Lee, N.J., and Redmond. Microsoft will oversee general operational management for the site under the direction of Erik Jorgensen, general manager of the Consumer Financial Products Group at Microsoft. A joint editorial board will provide strategic editorial direction for the site.
