CNBC's Most Annoying Commercials

Aural Torture...No I Can't Change the Channel

Maybe it’s because I work 5 days a week, 10 to 11 hours a day with CNBC blaring in my ears, but I can’t understand for the life of me why they can’t diversify their advertiser portfolio.  The average weekday’s soundtrack these days is like an incessant, hellish loop with the same 6 or 7 commercials running 6 or 7 times an hour.

So, here’s my revenge.

I don’t know if it’s the advertisers who produce the commercials or CNBC who runs them ad nauseum that I blame most, but below is my list of the most obnoxious, annoying and pointless commercials on CNBC.  Please put them out of our misery, Network Brass.

Davy Jones for GorillaTrades.com
So offensive, I’m almost amazed that there are actually enough people responding to justify this commercial.  For starters, the “joke” is that Davy Jones was the lead singer of the Monkees, but he “invests like a gorilla“.  The writer or producer of this atrocity should have spent 11 seconds on Wikipedia, where he may have read that Gorillas are not monkeys, they are, in fact, apes (apes don’t have tails, monkeys do).  Fine, that’s pedantic.  Let’s just say that this irresponsible nonsense was cute before the market was sucked into a death spiral, now it’s just plain reckless.  Reminds me of the Etrade commercials during the dot com bubble when Jackie Chan would kick his laptop in midair to place a trade and Anna Kornikova waxed poetic about P/E ratios.  Davy – Branson, Missouri just called, your theater is ready.

“Helloooo Tony!” for Powershares
OMG, please makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop….the visuals are nice and no one who is trading sees them anyway, but the gist of this recurring nightmare is that a camera enters “Tony’s” ear and we next see him inside his own brain being introduced to his own ideas in a large auditorium.  There’s a fat kid riding around on a tricycle for some reason and the cartoonish english accent that delivers the “Helloooooo Tony” line is the most gratingly absurd thing I’ve ever been subjected to.  I would rather eat glass than hear it again.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSj7b_O4McU]
Daisy May’s BBQ
This is a local one to the New York area, so I wrangled up a video for out-of-towners.  Where to begin…firstly, that jingle in the background (subtly sung to the tune of “Daisy, Daisy“) is outrageously annoying, listen to it once and then picture hearing it 20 times a day.  But the song is nothing compared to the zoftig Hooter’s waitress wannabe that comes on and invites us to partake in good old-fashioned down home BBQ cooking…in an AUSTRALIAN accent.  Seriously, listen closely.  She’s attempting a southern accent and masking another one.  She’s either Australian or she’s been struck by lightening.  BTW, the food sucks.

These are the three worst offenders that come to mind, but we’ll be updating this list as the pain continues.  Honorable mention for Most Annoying CNBC Commercial goes to The Supah Fond (“Regulations prohibit me from telling you anything useful”) and this guy from Law and Order lecturing me about investing with TD Ameritrade Waterhouse Whatever…go away, Sam.