Mark Hoffman out as CNBC chief, KC Sullivan replacing him
Newslooks- NEW YORK (AP) & CNBC
Veteran CNBC chief Mark Hoffman is leaving the network after 28 years, with London-based executive KC Sullivan replacing him early next month, the network said on Tuesday.
Hoffman was named president of the financial news network in 2005 and elevated to chairman in 2015.
“During his tenure, CNBC became a world leader and every year it has grown better and stronger,” said Cesar Conde, chairman of the NBCUniversal News Group.
Sullivan, who begins as CNBC president on Sept. 12, is currently president and managing director of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, and has been based in London. He was in executive roles at NBC and CNBC for the decade before that.
Sullivan will return to the U.S. for his new role. Hoffman will stay on as a consultant through the transition, Conde wrote in a note to NBCUniversal employees.
“Mark has overseen the steady continued growth of CNBC as the world’s #1 business and money news brand,” Conde said. “No business news organization comes close to the reach and influence of CNBC, a true testament to Mark’s leadership.”
CNBC is one of NBCUniversal’s most consistently profitable assets, even as millions of Americans drop linear cable TV subscriptions each year. Hoffman, 65, has increased profitability at CNBC in 16 of his 17 years running the company. CNBC is set to grow its profitability again in 2022, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“We are in the business of business so it’s important to note we’ve never been more profitable, setting record after record in financial performance, year after year, as we maneuvered through economic cycles, exogenous events and the historic secular change that accompanied the information age,” Hoffman said in a note to CNBC employees.
Hoffman’s CNBC tenure
Hoffman first joined CNBC in 1997 before leaving in 2001 for a series of leadership positions at local TV stations. He returned to CNBC in 2005 and immediately pushed to acquire 50% equity interests in CNBC Europe and CNBC Asia from Dow Jones, as well as a 25% stake in CNBC World.
With financial control over its international properties, Hoffman expanded CNBC’s TV reach and turned his attention to growing CNBC’s digital business. CNBC.com has grown 6-fold in the past six years, with unique monthly readership growing from about 30 million to nearly 200 million.
He’s focused on consistency on the cable network side, which still makes up the majority of CNBC’s revenue. Hoffman has renewed contracts for notable TV personalities including Jim Cramer, Joe Kernen, Becky Quick, David Faber, Carl Quintanilla and Andrew Ross Sorkin to maintain CNBC’s leadership as a trusted source of news, especially for wealthier Americans.
“Once defined as a moribund domestic cable channel that many thought would never fully recover from the dotcom bubble bursting, CNBC is today a global multimedia powerhouse, punching far above its weight, in the digital age,” Hoffman said.
While CNBC is no longer rated by Nielsen, CNBC TV has ranked No. 1 among all business news platforms for 29 consecutive years in reaching Americans who make more than $125,000 a year, according to Ipsos surveys.
