Cacophonous CNBC

Marion Maneker gets an astonishing admission from Jonathan Wald, the man in charge of news at CNBC who’s now leaving the station:

"Conflict is king in cable television," Wald says. "You want more than one guest at a time. You want cacophony, not a symphony."

Which raises the obvious question: who wants cacophony? Wald has clearly determined that CNBC’s viewers want it — but why would they? It makes no sense to me.