CNBC’s Mark Haines “Was Not Replaced”

Following up on today’s CNBC announcements: CNBC vet Mark Haines helped create Squawk Box, but beginning next month, he will appear on only one hour of it.

In an interview with Broadcasting & Cable today, Mark Hoffman “denied that Haines’s role with the program was diminished, although Haines…will go from anchoring three hours of the show to reporting for an hour from the Stock Exchange.”

“It’s not as if we took Mark off his three hours and replaced him with someone who was going to do three hours — that’s not what we’ve done at all,” Hoffman said. “We’ve got four people who are being assigned to four hours. We had to find a spot to change up the team and the perfectly appropriate time is when we’re rounding the far turn and heading into the home stretch before the market opens and that’s 9 to 10 a.m.

It’s incredible showcasing. It’ll be a focused hour in a new venue on location, so I guess it’s open for interpretation but the fact is he was not replaced with anyone. His three hours were replaced with three anchors, not one anchor.”