CNBC is a great brand and there has been a big push over the past few months to expand it even further. The new studio was followed by new sound effects and graphics that were more than a bit annoying. New, new, new - I get the whole push to make financial media new, exciting and hip. I can only imagine the amount of money the network must have spent on focus groups and surveys to tell them how to leverage the brand they have built. When the new lineup of hosts from Squawk Box to Fast Money showed up, I just kept watching and simultaneously wondered - “where the hell is Ron Insana?” It’s their network and I admire the marketing effort, but is creating a new index called the FTSE CNBC Global 300 an effort to fill a critical void in financial info and the markets? Or is it just another way to cash in by eventually sponsoring an ETF with the same name? Now we have the new CNBC.com and while I still use Moneycentral, I suspect that the website investment and the non-stop on-air plugs will eventually brainwash me to put it in my favorites list. It does look pretty good and I am sure they were out to enhance the investing success of their viewers. Or maybe it was just a way to use the brand to try and get people to sign up for CNBCplus “for only $9.95 per month. That’s a 33% Savings!” Scroll down to the fine print that says the regular price is $14.95. What a bargain!!! Are you going to sign up? GE/NBC can do whatever they want with the CNBC brand. As long as they don’t look too cheap and totally forget about financial journalism, I’ll still watch.