CNBC Emailed and Here Is What They Want You To Know About ‘Death: It’s A Living’

Email From CNBC:

Ryan –

CNBC’s documentary “Death: It’s A Living” as it takes an inside look at a funeral home and its director as well as the business of cemeteries. The documentary, premiering on Thursday, January 31st at 9PM ET/PT and reported by CNBC’s Tyler Mathisen, goes inside the $17 billion-a-year “death care” industry.

Here’s a brief description of the program:

Death isn’t just a certainty — it’s an industry, where sympathy and profits go hand in hand. In this one-hour documentary, CNBC tells the fascinating story of a business, which everyone confronts yet few understand. Did you know that casket sales rise during cold and flu season, or that a new breed of entrepreneurs can transport your cremated remains aboard a rocket ship? With a fast-paced and engaging approach, CNBC’s Tyler Mathisen profiles the professionals who earn their living bringing people from here… to the hereafter. The documentary goes behind the scenes of the increasingly corporate-owned business of funeral homes, explaining a tradition critics say is commercially created and designed to pump up profits. It explores the huge rise in cremation and uncovers some unconventional ways to say goodbye, whether at sea or in space. CNBC follows a traveling salesman who peddles caskets, with new models that have been widened to keep pace with risin g obesity rates. And, it goes inside the strange business of cemeteries: real estate entities where the land, and new income, inevitably run out but the pricey promise to maintain every gravesite remains.

But, can this industry, steeped in tradition and facing profound changes, reinvent itself for a generation that’s demanding new ways to deal with the departed and celebrate their lives? Viewers will find out everything they didn’t know about the business of death.

Here are a few preview clips: