CNBC, the world's leading satellite and cable business news network, owned by NBC Universal, expects its new collaboration with state broadcaster China Central Television to sharpen its mainland coverage and double its global audience.
The strategic partnership, announced in Beijing last Friday, follows one forged in 2003 between CNBC and Shanghai Media Group (SMG), the country's second-largest news and media conglomerate after CCTV.
With those two alliances secured, CNBC now has a wider back door into the mainland's coveted domestic media market, which continues to be technically off-limits to foreign investors.
Those deals are also in line with what CNBC president Mark Hoffman said was a plan for a steady and calculated expansion into the mainland.
'It's a process, and we're working through that,' Hoffman told the South China Morning Post in an interview early this year. 'We feel good about where we are ... We're aggressive in some parts of the world and we're patient in others.'
Launched in April 1989, CNBC provides 24-hour financial market coverage and business information to more than 390 million households worldwide.