• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, December 4, 2006

After spending months overhauling its Web operations, CNBC today unveiled its new Internet site: a mix of financial news, data and interactive features with a heavy emphasis on video.

While the new site mirrors the high-tech look and feel of CNBC's cable broadcast, the revamped Web presence was designed to complement the TV network with footage and features that go beyond its on-air programming.

To that end, CNBC.com offers both video-on-demand and a streaming video player to provide live coverage of events from company press conferences to testimony by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to interviews on the stock exchange floor.

"Anything routed into our digital facility, we have the ability to reroute and stream on the Web site," said Scott Drake, vice president, CNBC Digital. CNBC.com is being run out of the same state-of-the-art broadcast facility as the cable network in Englewood, NJ.

With the revamped site, CNBC is poised to take on online financial news competitors such as Bloomberg and Yahoo Finance.

Embedded on each Web page, the VOD player includes news clips from the last 24 hours and runs videos tied to news stories they appear near. Since April, CNBC.com has amassed an archive of more than 15,000 videos, with 75 new clips added each day.

The new CNBC site will also feature Web 2.0-style widgets that allow users to customize a stock ticker at the bottom of the screen and a watchlist that lets users know when guests related to their stocks are scheduled to appear on CNBC.

Blogs will play a big part as well. On-air talent including Phil LeBeau, Mike Huckman and Julia Boorstin will host blogs on the industries they cover while CNBC.com staffers will live blog the network's Business Day programming. Each CNBC show including "Squawk Box" and "Mad Money with Jim Cramer" will also have its own blog.

By offering both added content and TV show recaps via blogs, CNBC.com hopes to draw the two main segments of its audience: those who watch CNBC and those who can't because they're at work or another location without access to TV. "We wanted to make [the site] a better experience for both groups," said Meredith Stark, vice president of CNBC.com.

For those who want more, there's CNBC Plus. For $9.95 a month, users can get full access to the video archive and live streams of CNBC broadcasts in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

The free service will be ad-supported and charter advertisers include Ameritrade, Gorilla Trades, Etrade, Fidelity Investments and Scottrade. In addition to display ads, the site will offer pre-roll spots of up to 30 seconds on VOD clips and a pre-roll unit that runs when someone launches the live video player.

Prior to the site relaunch, CNBC.com hired a team of senior editorial and design staffers from outlets including Forbes.com and the Wall Street Journal Online.