CNBC.com’s $1 Mil Portfolio Challenge

$1 million in cash is on display in the CNBC newsroom today, courtesy of the Bank of America.

A Brinks truck rolled up to the network’s headquarters in Englewood Cliffs this morning for the launch of the first-ever “CNBC.com Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge.”

According to the press release, the twelve-week competition will enable “aspiring portfolio moguls can turn 1 million ‘CNBC Bucks’ into a Grand Prize of $1 million” dollars. Details…

> Update: 8:18pm: A frustrated CNBC viewer writes: “The past several weeks they’ve pitched their Million Dollar Challenge game at practically every commercial break, had their on-air folks pitch it at least 2-3x an hour, and every 15 minutes they poison the NASDAQ ticker by replacing realtime quotes with ads for the Challenge.

So today the Challenge starts. They’re pitching it like crazy, and doing ongoing fluff pieces (so how would YOU spend this “million bucks”?) as their on-air folks fawn over the million bucks in cash and armed guards at their Englewood Cliffs studios.

It’s sickening. How much more of this tripe will we be subjected to? God I hope not for the length of this Challenge…”