What CNBC has in common with professional wrestling.

The recession makes everyone tense, but nowhere does that tension seem to break out as regularly as it does on CNBC, where frustration and recriminations over fraud, risk, and lost trillions repeatedly roll into a boil-between the on-air talent.

Take the recent exchange between reporter Charlie Gasparino and host Dennis Kneale (embedded below). The two are at each other's throats: Kneale barks, "Let me finish!" Gasparino taunts Kneale with the suggestion that he might want to try reporting sometime. Clearly offended, Kneale scolds the bulldog correspondent, "It's bad for the CNBC brand to impugn the reporting skills of your colleagues."

It turns out Kneale is haughty but wrong. The constant carping, acting out, and cartoonish behavior has been anything but bad for CNBC's brand. In fact, it is part of a conscious strategy to take what was once a staid place where the markets themselves starred and turn it into a free-for-all with heroes and villains and a running back story sort of like professional wrestling.

That strategy was executed with the constant hand of architect Jonathan Wald guiding his on-air team. It was a strategy that helped fend off Roger Ailes and Fox Business—remember them? But it also eventually led to the announcement Tuesday that Wald would be leaving the cable network at the end of the quarter.

"Conflict is king in cable television," Wald says. "You want more than one guest at a time. You want cacophony, not a symphony." That point of view is what made CNBC an odd combination of up-to-the-second market information, talk radio, and a freewheeling sports show that cuts into the action at every lull.