“We want to talk to the newsmaker.” That was Andrew Morse, then president of Bloomberg Television’s U.S. operations, speaking to NPR’s David Folkenflik in February 2013 at the height of the booking war between Bloomberg and CNBC. Thirteen years later it is still the most useful sentence anyone has said about how to get on Bloomberg TV. The network does not book experts in general. It books the person closest to the news that is moving markets today.
That standard sounds harsh until you see the upside. Bloomberg Media says Bloomberg Television reaches more than 400 million homes worldwide from its studios in New York, London and Hong Kong. In October 2025 the company said more than 60 million people watch Bloomberg programming in an average month, and that its cross-platform video audience grew 16% year over year through the first half of 2025, with hours watched up 34%. On October 28, 2025, Bloomberg TV+ joined YouTube TV, its first distribution deal with the platform. The audience is large, global and made up of people who move money.
Pick the Bloomberg TV show before you write the pitch
There is no single Bloomberg TV booking desk. Each program runs its own production team, its own booking producers and its own idea of a good guest. A pitch written for “Bloomberg” lands nowhere. A pitch written for one show, at one hour, about one story, at least has a chance. Most of how to get on Bloomberg TV comes down to that choice.
Bloomberg Surveillance is the flagship morning show. Since January 22, 2024, the television edition has been anchored by Jonathan Ferro, Lisa Abramowicz and Annmarie Hordern from a dedicated studio at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters. The radio edition, which also streams on YouTube, is hosted by Tom Keene and Paul Sweeney. Surveillance guests are mostly chief investment officers, strategists, economists and senior executives with a sharp view on rates, inflation, the Fed or a big data release. Recent radio episodes in October 2026 featured guests reacting to PPI and CPI prints the same morning. If your view cannot survive a 7 a.m. argument with Ferro about the bond market, Surveillance is the wrong first target.
Bloomberg Open Interest launched on July 8, 2024, airing from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Eastern, with Matt Miller, Katie Greifeld and Sonali Basak at launch. Bloomberg’s announcement said the show would feature top strategists and the single-stock stories driving the action at the opening bell, and recent episodes have Miller alongside co-hosts including Greifeld and Dani Burger. This is the show for a portfolio manager with a call on a specific name, or an executive whose company is the story of the open.
Bloomberg Tech, hosted by Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow, relaunched with new branding and format in June 2025. Bloomberg describes it as the only daily live global technology show focused on market-moving news. The same announcement named Jackie Lopez as executive producer leading the expansion of the network’s technology coverage, and launched monthly spinoffs, Bloomberg Tech: Europe with Tom Mackenzie in London and Bloomberg Tech: Asia with Shery Ahn and Annabelle Droulers. This is the most realistic door for founders and operators, as long as the company is part of a story Bloomberg is already chasing.
Balance of Power covers politics and policy from Capitol Hill to the White House and the Federal Reserve, co-hosted by Joe Mathieu and Kailey Leinz since January 2024. The Close, with Romaine Bostick and Katie Greifeld, handles the trading day’s final hours. In Europe, from January 5, 2026, The Opening Trade runs 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. GMT with Anna Edwards, Guy Johnson and Tom Mackenzie, and Francine Lacqua continues her long-form interview series.
Watch at least five episodes of the show you want before you pitch it. Note who gets booked, how long segments run, whether guests sit in studio or join remotely, and which stories open the hour. That homework will tell you more about the booker’s taste than any media kit.
What does a Bloomberg booker screen for?
Start with the people doing the screening. Bookers are a strange job in news. Jonathan Wald, a former top CNBC executive, described them to NPR in 2013 as “the snipers who sit waiting for their prey.” They are measured on landing the right guest for a fast-moving story, ahead of rival networks, with very little room for a dud. Bloomberg has advertised booking producer roles dedicated to Surveillance alone, which tells you how specialized the work has become.
A booker reads your pitch looking for three things in about the time it takes to read the subject line. Is this person tied to a story we are covering today or this week? Can this person say something specific that our anchors cannot say themselves? Will this person be good on air?
The third question trips up more executives than the first two. In a 2004 MarketingSherpa interview, Sandi Kalman, then producer of Bloomberg Small Business, said she would open any email with “guest pitch” in the subject line and that television experience helped. She also warned against the opposite problem: “I’ve dealt with people who were over-media-trained.” Guests who sound rehearsed lose the anchor’s interest and the booker’s trust. Kalman added that she rarely booked software companies “because it doesn’t translate to TV very well to talk about software.” The specific show is long gone, but the lesson holds. Bloomberg’s anchors want a guest who explains what a product does to revenue, prices or jobs, not one who recites features.
Bloomberg’s audience also changes what counts as specific. Bloomberg Television is also available to Terminal subscribers through the TV function, which puts the stream one keystroke away from live prices. A claim like “demand is strong” does nothing for them. A claim like “our enterprise orders in Europe fell 12% in September, and here is why” gives them something to check against a price. That is the bar.
The Ticker Test is the filter your pitch must pass
The Ticker Test is a four-check filter for deciding whether a story is ready for Bloomberg Television or needs more work first. Every check is pass or fail. A pitch needs all four to go out. Three out of four means the story goes back for another week, or goes to a print reporter instead.
The first check is the market tie. Does the story explain a move in a price, a rate, a deal or a policy decision that Bloomberg is covering right now? Name it in the first line of the pitch. “Your Surveillance segment on the October jobs report” passes. “Thought leadership on the future of work” fails. If you cannot point to a headline on the Bloomberg Terminal or bloomberg.com from the last 48 hours that your guest speaks to, you do not have a market tie yet.
The second check is the owned number. Does the guest bring one figure that is theirs, that the network cannot pull from a terminal function, and that they can defend under follow-up questions? Proprietary survey data, order trends, pricing changes, hiring numbers or a fund’s positioning all qualify. A number borrowed from someone else’s report does not, because the anchor already has it.
The third check is the mandate. Does the guest hold the title and authority to say the claim on the record without legal or communications pulling it back at the last minute? CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, chief economists and named portfolio managers pass. A senior director “speaking on behalf of” a company usually fails, because Bloomberg’s anchors will ask questions only an executive can answer. Clear the compliance review before the pitch, not after the booking.
The fourth check is the clock. Can the guest appear inside the window when the story is live, which on a market day may mean within a few hours? That means a confirmed calendar hold, a quiet room, a wired connection, a decent camera and microphone, and someone who can get them to Bloomberg’s studio at 731 Lexington Avenue in New York, or the London or Hong Kong studios, if the show wants them in person. Plenty of strong pitches die because the expert is on a flight when the booker replies.
Run the Ticker Test on every pitch draft. It takes ten minutes and saves the more expensive mistake, which is teaching a booker that your name in the inbox means a story that is not ready.
Why does the Iger walk still matter for sequencing?
On October 30, 2012, Disney announced it would acquire Lucasfilm for roughly $4 billion. CNBC’s Julia Boorstin landed a direct interview with Disney CEO Bob Iger that day and believed she had an exclusive. According to NPR’s reporting, minutes later Iger walked over to speak live by satellite with an anchor for Bloomberg TV, and Boorstin was seen confronting his team about it. By early 2013, CNBC producers were sending guests a red-text policy reminder: CNBC could not use guests with a same-day appearance on Fox Business or Bloomberg, and accepting a CNBC booking meant accepting those terms.
Morse’s response was to put a caption reading “FIRST ON BLOOMBERG” over interviews, which was true in a narrow sense because it marked the guest’s first Bloomberg appearance that day. He also told NPR that Bloomberg understood newsmakers need to get information out through more than one outlet.
The episode is 14 years old, and the lesson is still current. Business networks care about order. When you have real news, such as earnings, a deal, a funding round or a major hire, you have to decide which network gets the first interview, and that choice affects who will book you that day and who will remember it next quarter. Ask each booker about their same-day policy before you confirm anything. Never promise an exclusive you cannot keep. If Bloomberg is your priority, offer it the first slot and say so plainly in the pitch, because “first” is something a booker can sell to the executive producer.
A second warning sits in the same territory. Bloomberg Television also airs sponsored programming. New to The Street, for example, describes itself as long-form sponsored programming that runs weekly on Bloomberg Television and Fox Business. Paying for that slot is advertising. It may have a place in an investor relations plan, but it is not a newsroom booking, it will not be cited as Bloomberg coverage by journalists, and it will not help you win a seat on Surveillance.
Build the path from Bloomberg News quotes to the set
If you are working out how to get on Bloomberg TV for the first time, start in print. The most reliable route onto Bloomberg Television runs through Bloomberg News. The network draws on more than 2,700 editorial professionals in over 120 countries, according to Bloomberg Media, and its TV producers watch what the newsroom publishes. When an executive is quoted well and often in Bloomberg stories about their sector, the TV team already knows who they are, and the pitch stops being cold.
Start with the reporters who cover your beat. Read their last 20 stories. Note which sources they quote, what data they lean on and what questions they keep asking. Then offer them what the Ticker Test requires: a market tie, an owned number, a source with a mandate and fast availability. One good quote in a Bloomberg story about a rate decision or a sector shake-up is worth more than ten generic pitches to a TV inbox, because it gives the booker a reason to believe you will deliver on air.
Use the print relationship to open the TV conversation. When a Bloomberg reporter writes a story that features your executive, send the relevant show a short note that same day. Link the story, name the segment you are thinking of, give the one number your guest will bring and confirm availability for the next 48 hours. Keep it under 150 words. Bookers read on phones between segments.
Prepare the guest for the format, not for a speech. Bloomberg segments move fast and anchors interrupt. Rehearse three points, each built around a number, and practice answering a hostile follow-up on each one. Do not script answers word for word, since Kalman’s warning about over-trained guests applies on every show. After the segment, send the booker a two-line thank you and a heads-up on when your guest will next have something new to say. That note is how a one-time guest becomes a regular.
If you are building this from scratch, the hardest part is finding the right reporters and producers on each beat. A current journalist list saves weeks of searching, which is why Instant Press offers one built around business and financial media.
Your next step this week: pick one Bloomberg show, watch its last five episodes, write down every guest’s title and topic, then draft a single pitch tied to a story from the past 48 hours and run it through all four Ticker Test checks before it leaves your outbox.