CNBC's Smash Hit: Oft-Shown Documentary on Wal-Mart

Both times it aired earlier this month, the CNBC documentary "The Age of Wal-Mart" attracted larger audiences than any other business program on the network that week.

That's not particularly noteworthy until you consider that they were reruns. More than a rerun: The Peabody Award-winning film is two years old and CNBC has shown it 44 times.

Television executives notice those kind of numbers, and the trend explains how Josh Howard got his job 10 months ago, running a newly formed documentary unit at CNBC and preparing the network's first news magazine for its December debut.

"It just tells you that there's a real appetite for in-depth documentaries on people and trends (in business)," the CNBC president, Mark Hoffman, said.

The unit's next film, "Big Brother, Big Business," premieres Wednesday. It's about all the little-known ways that businesses can spy on and collect information about their employees and customers, and follows this month's well-received documentary on the inner workings of American Airlines.

It's a challenging time at CNBC, which is facing job cuts due to parent NBC Universal's recent directive to cut costs and a potential challenge from a new business network under consideration by the creators of Fox News Channel.

After failures with the likes of John McEnroe and Dennis Miller, CNBC under Mr. Hoffman has been trying to make prime-time programming that's more consistent with the business-oriented news that dominates its daytime schedule.

CNBC's average prime-time audience this year of 128,000 is a fraction of industry leader Fox News Channel's 1.4 million, according to Nielsen Media Research.

But CNBC's numbers have inched up from last year. The two airings of the Wal-Mart documentary on October 15 averaged 236,000 viewers, while the two premiere showings of "Inside American Airlines: A Week in the Life" averaged 345,500 people.

Documentaries are costly, particularly compared to studio shows with a couple of people talking, and that's why they've become endangered species at broadcast networks.

But a broadcaster won't show a documentary 44 times. If a lower-budget cable network can get this kind of a ride from a film and maintain ratings, it makes the expense worthwhile, executives said.