I recently met the CXO of a ‘business’ channel. No he/she did not like being called a ‘ticker channel’. CXO wanted to know what people thought about his channel. I said ‘I really do not know because I do not ask people which channel they watch.

And this is what I told him….

1. the number of people doing direct investing is falling, NOT INCREASING.
2. More people are today investing in mutual funds, etf, etc. than trying to buy and sell shares like it was earlier.
3. Too many channels are attempting to get the ‘trader’
4. Not enough serious discussions on more complicated topics like ‘asset allocation’, ‘reversion to mean’ etc.
5. The real wealth is being created by the Mutual funds – not by direct equity
6. The financial media is irrationally addicted to trading stories! Is it because it feels urgent and are entertaining? The serious mutual fund investor is not really seeing this is he? There is a focus on analyst research calls, upgrades, downgrades, quarterly results, economic data releases, m and a buzz, etc. etc.  This is PERHAPS highly interesting and I personally do not watch television so cannot comment. Sadly this seems to be the only thing on the airwaves. It is disproportionately dominant to what is happening on the street, is it not? There seems to be a big content arbitrage opportunity here.
7. Television vs Investing well seems just like the battle between eating right vs eating junk. Some of us can spend hours teaching / training and reducing people’s expectation to say 10-12% in equities, and then a channel comes and says ‘direct equities can give you 24% per year for 30 years’. Obviously veggies and fruits do not win, it is the sugary ‘immediate gratification’ food / investment option that wins. And it hurts the long term prospects of the investor. This makes television a villian in the long run.
8. There are many potential content creators from the asset management and wealth management professions who are currently  untapped and would be willing to participate in content creation.
9. Portfolio analytics and measurement tools to help them track where they are in their goals – and using current data, and along with risk management tricks – will give people a reason to keep coming back to the web page. You really do not need breaking news and negative perceptions.
10. If you read my blog I write posts for eternity, even though it is tempting to do 500 world columns in newspaper with ‘current headline’ as applicable to personal finance. ‘Falling interest rates are hurting the senior citizen’ is far more attractive than ‘Understand how you should be chasing REAL returns – NOT NOMINAL returns.
11. Some media company is going to find out about this gap and fill it in. It is likely to be a NON MEDIA company which will find this trend!!