The ability to walk past traders and their posts has “lent an immediacy we never had before,” said Mr. Pisani. “It makes the floor immediate.” 

Mr. Pisani has long reported live from the NYSE’s world-famous floor, but always from the same stationary spots. With the new mobile camera — the first such camera ever used on the trading floor — Mr. Pisani can now go to an active trading post rather than point to an off-camera spot and describe it from a distance.

The lively, frenetic NYSE trading floor has long been a draw for business news organizations eager to cover Wall Street and the world’s leading stocks. Today, 30 reporters from 18 networks worldwide report live from the NYSE on a regular basis, including Susie Gharib from PBS’s Nightly Business Report and CNN’s Susan Lisovicz. Other news organizations include Bloomberg, which broadcasts in the United States, Latin America and Europe; 1010 WINS radio; and foreign broadcasters such as Swedish TV, TV Tokyo America, and Phoenix Satellite Television, a major television network in China, the first foreign media outlet allowed to broadcast directly to China’s 1 billion people.

“I feel so lucky and proud to be reporting every day from a place where there’s so much going on,” said Jackie Pang, a long-time reporter on the NYSE floor and now the exclusive reporter for Phoenix Satellite Television. “It’s so much better than sitting in a studio, which is boring to viewers. We’re bringing them something they’ve never seen before.”

The same sentiment has prompted news organizations over the years to host entire shows from the floor. Last month, for example, CNBC began broadcasting its new one-hour morning show, Squawk on the Street, directly from the balcony overlooking the trading floor.

“We’re going to take you right into the heart of the game,” said Mark Haines, anchor of Squawk on the Street, on the first day of the show. “It’s going to be like covering a football game while we’re standing right next to the quarterback.” 

The show, which airs from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. weekdays, expands CNBC’s signature morning program, Squawk Box, to four hours, from three. The cable television network is available to 86 million homes in the United States and Canada, according to CNBC.

“Having Mark Haines, with his attitude, opinions and smarts, hosting from the New York Stock Exchange will continue to distinguish CNBC,” said David Friend, senior vice president of CNBC’s Business News, in a press release.

“CNBC saw an opportunity to produce a show here and seized the opportunity,” added Tony Walenty, head of the NYSE’s Broadcast Center, noting that broadcasting space is limited. “The balcony is a unique location because it allows CNBC to show the world what goes on here.”

While viewers get an inside look at the NYSE, traders get a chance to show the world their world — something they’re eager to do given the public’s curiosity about the NYSE’s auction market.

Ted Weisberg, president of brokerage firm Seaport Securities who is frequently interviewed by news organizations on the floor, at first was skeptical of the media attention, saying that he feared glamorizing a profession that he has taken so seriously. But now he sees the media presence as a strong positive.

“The media brings what we do to the public and eliminates misconceptions that people have,” he said. “It helps make what we do more transparent.”

Jennifer Williams, a broker for LL Partners who also works on the NYSE trading floor, agrees. “It helps to bring the NYSE to the American public,” she said of CNBC’s new wireless camera. By letting Mr. Pisani get close to busy trading crowds, viewers “can hear how we talk and see firsthand how we interact,” she said. “It shows them how the auction market works.” 

The media presence also gives listed companies a tremendous boost in visibility. The opening- and closing-bell ceremonies alone — which typically feature listed companies —are viewed by millions of viewers around the world.

“The media outreach yielded 96 stories — 50 online, 35 TV, nine print and two national radio — reaching an audience of more than 100 million,” said Melissa Plaisance, Safeway’s senior vice president of Finance and Investor Relations, of the coverage of the food retailer’s brand repositioning campaign launched at the NYSE last year.

Safeway (SWY) was among the hundreds of NYSE-listed companies that used the bell-ringing ceremony to celebrate and publicize mergers, anniversaries, product launches, promotional campaigns, and of course, their own listings.  

Take the Chicago Board of Trade (BOT ), which celebrated its IPO listing in October. Maria Gemskie, CBOT’s managing director of Communications, noted that the media coverage “helped to generate a tangible excitement” over its IPO, which was then the second most successful of the year.

“The listing celebration,” she said, “generated a great deal of media coverage, both print and television.”