You may know Christine Romans as one of the best business correspondents on TV, but she wants to make clear her new show, Current, which debuts Monday on NBC News Now, won’t be focused on Wall Street. “It’s not going to be a business news story show,” Romans told me. “It’s going to be a kitchen table show…all the stuff that’s going to matter to families, that’s our framework.”

Romans said her two-hour block, between 10 a.m. and noon ET, is a “really cool chunk of time” when live news shifts from what happened yesterday and overnight into what’s happening today--and what will dominate discussion later in prime time. “L.A. is waking up. U.S. markets are open,” Romans said. “Things are starting to pop. Supreme Court rulings. Press briefings at the White House…what will lead the evening news programs is happening right then, and we’re going to be doing it in real time and that’s exciting.”

From London to DC, midday is prime time

Romans has long covered business with an eye to how market forces impact life on Main Street--and at the kitchen table. She began her career at the Des Moines Register before moving to cover markets for Knight-Ridder and Reuters, and then two decades at CNN, where she served as chief business correspondent and host of Early Start with Christine Romans.

Romans moved to NBC two years ago, where she serves as senior business correspondent reporting across all platforms, including regular appearances on NBC’s flagships, Today and NBC Nightly News. She’ll tap the deep bench of journalists at NBC for Current.

“I just had a really cool meeting with our team in London,” she said. “And they’re really excited because (10 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET) is their prime time. They’ve been working on great stuff all day long. And the D.C. team is really enthusiastic because there’s a lot happening in those hours, and we’re going to be able to be live and write on those developments."

‘Every story is a business story’

At a time when the prices of gas, beef and eggs have become top of mind, Romans says there’s no escaping the links between what happens in Washington and overseas--and how it impacts families across the country.

“Every story is a business story," she said. "Every story is a story about a dollar and about money—who has it, who doesn’t have it, how it’s moving…there is no line between the top story of the day… and business news.”

Drawing those links between, say, Washington moves on tariffs or taxes and the cost of a gallon of gas won’t get lost in a cloud of Wall Street lingo. It’s one of Romans’ long term pet peeves.

“Why does the Iran war matter to my mortgage in Peoria, Illinois? How can that possibly be?” Romans asked, saying that on Current, the answer will always be conversational. “It’s a real-life mission of mine to make sure everybody has access to this really important information.”

It’s the sometimes brutal struggle with affordability is a topic Romans has heard over and over again from viewers she’s talked to in the weeks leading up to the launch of Current. “People would stop and say, 'Keep going. People in Washington need to understand that our insurance rates are too high, or that we can’t afford electricity, or that this is nuts—that grocery bills are 30% higher today than they were six years ago,’” she recalled. “Don’t give up on the cost of living story.”

‘50 States in 50 Days’

A signature element of the first months of Current--and a way the show will maintain that tight bond with American families--will be a collaborative effort between the Current show team and NBC affiliate stations across the country, surfacing stories--and solutions--far from the traditional news bases of Washington, New York, London, and Los Angeles.

“What’s a national or statewide problem that someone has solved, and you can’t believe some of these great stories that people have told,” Romans told me. “So we’re going to roll one of those out every day for 50 days, and then I’m hoping we just do it again. It was so good. I’m really excited about having some solutions, having a taste of what's happening outside the Beltway, outside of Wall Street.”

That means no hyperbole, no breathless “breaking” for the sake of it, and no jargon…you have an economy that is strongest in the world, that statistically looks really good, but people say their budget doesn’t feel it,” Romans said. “That is a dichotomy… and I’ll continue to report on it.”

Built for NBC’s Multi-Platform Future

The launch of Current comes as NBC News Now continues to expand, becoming one of the fasting-growing streaming news platforms, delivering more live programming hours than any other streamer.

The scale is impressive: the NBCU News Group draws a combined audience of 136 million viewers each month, with NBC News Digital reporting 111 million unique visitors and NBCNews.com delivering 81 million unique viewers in the first quarter of 2026.

That means producing a show that doesn’t just exist during the two hours between 10 and noon. “At NBC, we’ve got News Now, we’ve got the Today show, we’ve got Nightly,” Romans said. “The news is the star, and it’s disseminated at NBC in a lot of different ways.”

That means viewers with no experience of watching news at a set time on a broadcast channel can still watch Current (or listen to a Current podcast, or read a story online) wherever they get their news--even if it’s on social media. “There are a lot of ways to find us,” Romans said. “My kids actually just go on social media. ‘Mom, I love that…put that on Instagram.’ Like, oh, my kids are watching.”

Launching her own show as her children take on their own challenges--starting college, preparing for college, and prepping for the SAT--led to a family meeting. Would everyone support Mom’s new workload?

“I’m like, guys, we have a lot going on in our house. Are we all on board here?” she recalled. Her son’s answer stuck with her: “‘Mom, we can do it together. I’m going to go to my new chapter, you’re going to do your new chapter.’”