January 19th saw the official launch of Korean channel SBS-CNBC at a ceremony at the Ritz Carlton hotel. This channel will operate twenty-hour hours a day and focus on both global and specifically Korean business.

This channel is an important collaboration between the Asia Pacific branch of CNBC (Consumer News and Business Channel) and SBS (Seoul Broadcasting System). As a symbol of the new relationship between the networks government and business officials, as well as the Chairman of SBS and President of CNBC, attended the VIP launch night.

Launched under the collective name of both networks, SBS-CNBC will present Korea’s daily business news, including feature Closing Bell that examines the markets during the final hour of trade, alongside wider CNBC coverage from across the globe. High hopes are held for the long-term collaboration of the two networks, which aim to provide a service that will connect the intricacies of the Korean domestic market with the more extensive business community. The President of CNBC Asia-Pacific, Satpal Brainch, states that although CNBC “has long been the number one global brand in financial news and information…[it has] never lost sight of delivering the news with local relevance”. The co-ordination of the massively successful brand of CNBC with the rich understanding SBS has of the Korean market is, in Brainch’s words, “what SBS-CBNC is all about”.

This new channel enables Koreans to keep up to date with the everyday business situation of their own economy whilst simultaneously bringing the global business world to their doorsteps. Opening Korean television to the global business world will offer a new vantage point for Korean businesses; they will now be able to view the global markets for the first time in their own language and alongside their own domestic markets.

On a business level, for that after all is the channel’s focus, CNBC will gain a better understanding of an increasingly important market and SBS will benefit from the global brand that is its partner and all the globalization experience it brings. The media is ever expanding, could such collaborations provide the starting point for the future of televisual factual broadcasting? Could this presentable format be the move that brings television closer to its trendier more multi-lingual brother, the Internet?

As our economies become more linked, countries paradoxically strive for new ways to hold onto their cultural identities. Through the integration of linguistic specificity and international information, SBS-CNBC certainly hopes to pave the way in this medium and improve the future of both its partner companies.

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