Merrill Lynch, Data Broadcasting Corp. Near Agreement On Marketwatch Joint Marketing Plan

Data Broadcasting Corp., the cable TV market data service, is finalizing a deal with Merrill Lynch & Co. that will allow Merrill to offer DBC's Marketwatch service to its customers. The program is expected to enter a pilot phase in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, within the next few weeks.

"Evidently the Merrill Lynch brokers have been complaining for years that they don't really have a service to offer their customers who ask about it," says Cathy Flynn, vice president, marketing, at DBC. "Merrill Lynch has tried a couple of different things to be able to provide one in-house and haven't been real successful with that. They decided rather than getting into the business themselves, they'll just make our service available." Dave Bonynge, vice president and manager of marketing technology at Merrill, won't discuss the deal.

Merrill Lynch was instrumental in the founding of DBC several years ago, but after a series of stock transactions, its ownership interest is now expressed through its holding in Infotechnology, Inc., which in turn holds a large stake in Financial News Network, Inc., DBC's parent. Infotechnology's other holdings include interests in Comtex Scientific Corp., Intex, the automated futures exchange, and most recently United Press International. Paul Steinle, Data Broadcasting Corp.'s president, was just appointed president of UPI.

DBC Marketwatch will be marketed to Merrill Lynch customers and to smaller financial consultants who trade through Merrill. It will be a hard-dollar business, says Flynn, with subscribers paying DBC directly, although "for very key customers a broker might order the service and pay for it himself." Outside of "a few cosmetic differences" -- like a bull on the screen -- the Merrill Lynch service will be the same as the standard DBC offering, she says.

Meanwhile, DBC is said to be anxious to get out of the ticker plant business as a way of reducing costs, and has contacted several vendors of consolidated feeds. For the first nine months of 1987, DBC lost $8.52 million on revenue of $578,000.