CNBC’s Hoffman & Howard Say They “Reconnected” Over The Summer

Following up on yesterday’s announcement: CNBC president Mark Hoffman met new long-form VP Josh Howard eight years ago “and had kept in intermittent contact with him since then,” according to the Hollywood Reporter. “Sometime during the summer, months after Howard had left CBS News, the two reconnected and started talking about the job.”

(However, early in March, a CNBC insider told TVNewser that Howard was seen walking around the network’s headquarters with Hoffman. “They were trying to keep on the DL, so he wasn’t paraded around,” the insider said.)

Hoffman says Howard “had many offers to sift through. He had to organize what he wanted to do next, and he had to wade through quite a bit of opportunity.”

Howard says: “I wasn’t really sure what my future would be after I left CBS: June, July, pretty much the summer, I began to get a bunch of calls. It was quite a relief, frankly. They were fairly interesting…but nothing as tempting as this.”