When corporate executives talk on cable network CNBC, the markets listen.
Stock prices zip up and down based on what they say.
But finding out later what was said can be extraordinarily difficult. Indeed, few things are so important, yet so ephemeral, as information distributed over the airwaves every day from the floor of Congress, CNBC, CNN, and other broadcast news sources. That's where many technology companies, based here and elsewhere, see an opportunity. The Internet offers the chance to make that video and text available immediately, at low cost, these companies argue, thus potentially solving the thorny problem created when market-moving information is distributed on television but is then practically inaccessible. It is a problem made all the more apparent by recently tightened requirements that public companies make financial information as accessible to individual investors as it is to market professionals.