Steve Frank: The Interrogator

Baldwin Louie — Mon, 21 May 2001 15:00:00 -0700

October 5, 2000: Priceline.com shares plunge to an all-time low of $6.94 after a dire earnings warning. Just weeks before, CEO Jay Walker sold $240 million in stock, at $23.75 a share, ostensibly to pour money into his other Priceline-like venture, WebHouse Club. But today, Walker announces that WebHouse Club is closing. Undaunted, the born salesman arrives at the CNBC studios to convince everyone the Priceline reverse-auction model is still going to change the world. Reporter Steve Frank is waiting.

Before Walker can warm up, Frank gets to the point. "There's a perception that possibly you misled investors in order to cash out your Priceline stake," he says. "How [is it] that, so quickly after you raised an enormous amount of money, you have to shut the thing down?"

"First of all," Walker counters, "we don't have to shut it down. We choose to wind it down." And with that feeble dissimulation, the Walker myth crumbles in front of a national audience.

Tough interviews like this have become Frank's signature - and have helped CNBC unseat CNN as America's most-watched cable news channel. Frank, 27, seems to ask exactly the question a CEO wants to avoid.

While CNN hired former model Willow Bay to host Moneyline (until she was upstaged by Lou Dobbs) and brought in Baywatch and NYPD Blue actress Andrea Thompson as a Headline News anchor, the bookish, brusque Frank has established himself as business TV's antibabe. "A four-minute interview is not a natural conversation," he says. "I spend a lot of time figuring out how I'm going to cut through the bullshit."

Frank grew up in suburban Detroit. As a Harvard undergrad, he spent two summers as a Wall Street Journal intern and landed the coveted banking beat upon graduation. "He was one of the best reporters I've ever seen, and at that age certainly the best I've ever seen," says his old boss, 24-year Journal veteran Doug Sease.

After a stint on the short-lived Dow Jones-ITT television venture WBIS+, Frank was hooked on TV. ("It's more adrenaline than print," he notes.) Dow Jones pulled the plug but soon partnered with CNBC. In 1998, Frank landed a gig as the Journal's on-air representative. He soon carved out his specialty: critical looks at then-thriving Net stocks. He also writes a weekly syndicated column and has penned a book, NetWorth. But it's the TV interviews that earn him his keep.

"Every CEO has a story," says Frank. "My job is to stop the spin."

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Steve Frank: The Interrogator