Henry Blogdet in Slate writes that you shouldn’t be taking investment advice from Jim Cramer seriously…

It would be impossible to write a “Bad Advice” column about investing without discussing Jim Cramer. I have been through several stages of feelings about Cramer. My initial belief was that the former hedge-fund manager, host of CNBC’s hit show Mad Money, and author of several books about speculating was perhaps the worst thing to happen to the financial security of average Americans since the crumbling of the Social Security system. I developed this theory in the early Mad Money days, when Cramer’s stock-picking track record—if on-air shouts, blurts, and Tourette’s-style tics can ever be called a “record,” which, in a serious context, they obviously can’t—remained close enough to market averages that Cramer was not laughed out of town when he suggested with a straight face that he was giving good advice.

UPDATE: Is this a case of pot meets kettle?

Tonight on Countdown, Keith Olbermann will be doing another segment on the Insight Magazine story. Over on FNC, Bill O’Reilly will be doing something on the Maria Bartiromo/Citigroup scandal.

UPDATE: Can’t watch both so I’m watched O’Reilly first (I’ll catch Countdown on the repeat). O’Reilly started out the top of the segment by trying to tie Bartiromo to “problems” at NBC News and NBC Entertainment…

As we reported NBC News has taken a sharp turn to the left. Under executives Jeff Zucker and Robert Wright with elements at NBC News (Translation: Keith Olbermann who doesn’t work at NBC News- Spud) now actually using propaganda from far left websites as primary source material. Unbelievable. In this week’s New York Magazine former General Electric CEO Jack Welch implies that if he were still in charge, he’d fire Zucker.

(section describing the Bartiromo scandal removed to save time)

NBC News denies any wrong doing (what’s NBC News have to do with CNBC? - Spud). But there is no denying trouble at NBC News headquarters in New York city. ABC News may overtake NBC’s newscast and CNBC and MSNBC have major ratings problems.

At that point I stopped watching. This was just too much. If O’Reilly wants to do a segment on Bartiromo, fine. I think CNBC needs to come clean and give an honest accounting of why this isn’t a conflict of interest for Bartiromo or the network. This “try to ignore the story and hope it blows over” approach isn’t serving either the network or its viewers well. You can quibble about the speed with which FNC addressed the Insight story issue, with each subsequent on the record comment going into greater detail about what happened and why it shouldn’t have happened, but at least FNC was trying to address the issue. CNBC is denying that a problem, or even the appearance of a problem, took place. At the very least it’s bad PR because it gives the appearance of impropriety.

But for O’Reilly to try and lump Bartiromo in with other comptletely unrelated issues, issues which are insulated from each other because of the respective divisions and organizations they take place in…which have no overlapping jurisdictions or responsibilities, is just ridiculous. This is O’Reilly in full “get NBC at all costs” mode throwing everything at the wall and trying to make it stick.

UPDATE 2: Even though it was announced via an MSNBC media release (not to be confused with a press release via the NBC Media Village), Countdown didn’t do the Insight article segment.

Senator Hillary Clinton will be interviewed by Anderson Cooper tonight. Cooper is in San Antonio, Texas for the opening ceremony of the Center for the Intrepid rehabilitation facility. The two-hour AC 360, titled THE TOUGHEST BATTLE: HEALING HEROES, takes a look inside the rehabilitation center for men and women of the Armed Forces who were severely injured in the current global war on terrorism. The transcript of Cooper’s interview with Senator Clinton follows…

ANDERSON COOPER: HOW MOVING WAS IT FOR YOU TO BE HERE TODAY?

Senator Hillary Clinton: it was extremely moving. Because we had several hundred wounded warriors from Iraq and Afghanistan who were really not only part of the ceremony but the reason we’re here. This center for the intrepid is going to provide highest rehab services available really anywhere in the world to our young men and women who have been wounded and come here to do everything they can to heal and regain as much mobility as they can and lead as productive a life as they can.

Cooper: CENTER COST $15 MIL. AMERICAN CITIZENS SOME GIVING A DOLLAR HERE, OTHERS LARGE DONATIONS. HAVE GIVEN A LOT. IT SAYS A LOT ABOUT AMERICAN PEOPLE WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT THE GOVT?
(more…)

Cable News Daily Ratings for January 26, 2007

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 879,000 viewers
CNN – 538,000 viewers
MSNBC – 279,000 viewers
CNBC – 208,000 viewers
HLN – 216,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 1,547,000 viewers
CNN – 827,000 viewers
MSNBC – 457,000 viewers
CNBC – 206,000 viewers
HLN – 412,000 viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC – 255,000 viewers
CNN –214,000 viewers
MSNBC – 115,000 viewers
CNBC – 93,000 viewers
HLN – 86,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC – 315,000 viewers
CNN – 260,000 viewers
MSNBC – 186,000 viewers
CNBC – 121,000 viewers
HLN – 180,000 viewers

Morning programs P2+ (25-54)
FOX & Friends – 769,000 viewers (329,000)
American Morning – 362,000 viewers (193,000)
Imus in the Morning– 334,000 viewers (117,000)
Robin & Co. – 240,000 viewers (110,000)
(more…)

A lot of noise flying around today between FNC and CNN. I don’t have a lot to say about this. Yeah, it’s brash and in your face but it’s also classic FNC advertising. Nothing really new here. You’re either going to like it or you’re not. All the networks do it to some degree or another. MSNBC has been doing it a lot lately aimed at both CNN and FNC.

That said I do have to say something about this…

CNN also points to awards — A Peabody, DuPont, and three Emmys for 360 in 2006. Greta Van Susteren? Zero.

Not that Van Susteren needs defending by ICN on this point but everyone in the business knows that FNC does not submit for awards. They did long ago but they stopped and haven’t done it since. CNN knows this. TVNewser knows this. So this whole award total comparison argument is patently pointless when only one side is playing the award collecting game.

The Raido Equalizer: Brian Maloney blogs about the Bartiromo scandal and sees a get Maria mob running amock.

As it’s vital to generating contacts that lead to important news tips, one would expect her to hobnob with corporate executives on a regular basis.

In addition, her attendence at company events and conferences brings her face- to- face with the business channel’s primary viewership constituency.

As a result, she’s in a tough position, as she needs to become close to industry leaders, but not too comfortable with them. At the same time, Maria must continue to report critically on corporate developments.

That creates a fine line for Bartiromo to walk and she may have crossed it a bit this time. But nothing justifies the level of media outrage we’ve seen over her practices.

ICN has learned that Bryan Boughton has been tapped to serve as FNC’s deputy bureau chief in Washington, DC . . . this was originally Bruce Becker’s role before he served at the interim bureau chief when Kim Hume departed in November. The news was announced by newly installed bureau chief Brian Wilson during a meeting in the DC bureau today.

UPDATE: Heather Dahl will be the bureau’s #3, Catherine Loper will run the White House unit, Dave Shott will join John Finley and Matthew Alexander (in NYC…Shott in D.C.) in running the 2008 Political Unit, and Jamie Nelson will handle Special Events coverage. (via FishbowlDC and other sources)

Being out yesterday, I missed the Post’s Paul Tharp writing about the story…

Maria Bartiromo climbed a long way from hatcheck girl at her father’s Brooklyn restaurant to TV star - and married into one of New York’s richest and most famous families.

In a career marked by hard work and chutzpah, Bartiromo has matured from the young “Money Honey” reporting from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to the most marketable and recognizable personality on CNBC - grabbing the biggest assignments and appearing off-camera at advertiser-driven events dozens of times a year.

I thought I had put this story to bed Saturday but it came alive again this morning. The New York Times’ David D. Kirkpatrick writes about the Insight Magazine story…

And in an interview, John Moody, a senior vice president at Fox News, said its commentators had erred by citing the Clinton-Obama report. “The hosts violated one of our general rules, which is know what you are talking about,” Mr. Moody said. “They reported information from a publication whose accuracy we didn’t know.”

There is an interesting twist to Kirkpatrick’s story though. Kirkpatrick drags MSNBC into the story by noting its reporting of Insight articles…

And the Fox News rival MSNBC has picked up several of Insight’s other recent anonymous “scoops.” Among them: that Mr. Bush was afraid to fire his adviser Karl Rove because “he knows too much”; that there is a rift between President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the president’s support for Israel; and that Mr. Bush spent the months before the midterm elections in a bunker-mentality focused on the Iraq war and the elections to the exclusion of all else. Mr. Kuhner has appeared as a guest on both networks.

A spokesman for MSNBC declined to comment. Representatives of News World Communications, the arm of the Unification Church that owns Insight, could not be reached for comment on Sunday night.

CNN put out a release this morning touting CNN.com as being tops in online news useage. The wording in the first paragraph is…interesting.

CNN.com, the Internet’s leading provider of news and information, claimed the greatest average monthly share of online news among all Current Events and Global News sites in 2006.

CNN.com, with 15 percent of online news usage, garnered a higher average monthly share of online news than both second-ranked Yahoo! News, which had a 13 percent share, and third-ranked MSNBC.com, which had a 10 percent share.*

“During 2006, CNN.com reasserted its dominance as a leading online news source, providing users with incomparable access to the best news and information and the most compelling on-demand video,” said David Payne, senior vice president and general manager of CNN.com. “Coming off such a strong year, we face the challenge to take the online news experience to a whole new level. As we move into 2007, our online consumers will find CNN.com more than capable to meet the challenge.”

For such major news as the midterm elections, the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the death of Steve Irwin and the execution of Saddam Hussein, millions of online users turned to CNN.com. In 2006, online news users spent an average 975 million Gross Usage Minutes (GUM) on CNN.com each month, topping other news sites, including Yahoo! News which was second with 856 million average monthly GUM. Source: Nielsen//NetRatings U.S. Home/Work Panel, January-December 2006 data, Current Events and Global News subcategory.
(more…)

FNC’s James Rosen is offering Brian Wilson’s old office space. FishbowlDC has the email…

TV Week’s Michelle Greppi has an profile of News Corp.’s Peter Chernin as part of a series called “12 to Watch”…

“I think Peter is feeling satisfaction at seeing the vision come to fruition even at this stage and knowing there’s more work to do,” said Chris Albrecht, chairman and CEO of HBO. “It’s an exciting time and I think he’s feeling, as he should, not just energized but calm about the task in front of him.”

“I admire no one more,” the HBO executive said.

Friends and colleagues say Mr. Chernin is uniquely qualified .

“The remarkable thing about Peter is he’s got both right brain and left brain, and I think they’ve both developed to the same point,” Mr. Vinciquerra said. “He’s equally adept at talking about the issues and opportunities in a pilot as he is discussing the business plan for a new cable channel and planning Fox’s future in the digital world.”

Mr. Chernin is not all work. He and wife Megan, who have three young adult children, find a lot of time for charitable causes. The first time Mr. Albrecht and Mr. Chernin spent time together socially, some 15 years ago, they jumped horses.

Blomberg’s Justin Baer and Michael White write about the ethical issues in the scandal (via Romenesko)…

The fallout from Citigroup Inc.’s ouster of executive Todd Thomson over his relationship with CNBC television anchor Maria Bartiromo is spilling into the profession of journalism, where professors don’t like what they see.

Bartiromo traveled from Asia on Citigroup’s private jet last year after Thomson, who headed the company’s brokerage and private bank, bumped Citigroup executives from the flight, said a person with knowledge of the matter. Thomson approved a $5 million sponsorship for a television series Bartiromo was to co- anchor. She also was named to the Leadership Advisory Board that Thomson founded at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia.

Thomson was interviewed by Bartiromo at least three times, including once since she joined the Wharton board. That gives the public reason to question whether they’re getting objective reporting, said Bob Steele, a professor of journalism ethics at Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida.

“To say these are personnel matters and shouldn’t be talked about publicly would be disingenuous when journalism itself is all about shining the light of scrutiny on powerful people,'’ said Steele. “It’s essential that she and CNBC address these issues.'’

Cindy Adams implies there’s more to this story, but doesn’t deliver the goods…

SPEAKING of lots more, there’s lots more on this long-going tete-a-tete 40,000 feet up twixt CNBC’s married Maria Bartiromo and her good friend, very good friend, like very very good friend Todd Thomson. They’ve been gossip for 18 months. Thomson was just bounced from his Citigroup top job for, among other things, lending her his company’s plane. On one flight from China where he told underlings to find their own way home, he told them to do it on the company’s dime so he could fly high in the sky with his American pie.

Mediaweek’s John Consoli writes about the latest wrinkles in that old Live vs. Live + SD ratings controversy…

In what is rapidly developing into a carbon copy of last year’s pre-upfront posturing, the media agencies again say they will not budge from using live-only program ratings as the basis for negotiating ad prices in the May upfront, while the broadcast networks say they will not do business unless DVR viewing is factored in by using live-plus-same-day or live-plus-two-day ratings.

“I think we’re exactly back to where we were at this time last year,” said Donna Speciale, president of investment and activation at MediaVest. “I’m upset with Nielsen [Media Research] because I thought we would have more commercial-ratings data released by now. And unless commercial ratings are part of the negotiations, we cannot agree on our clients behalf to do business using anything but live ratings,” she said, echoing the opinion of most media agency executives contacted for this story last week.

“We need to negotiate using commercial ratings,” said another media agency executive, who did not want to speak for attribution. “But unfortunately they will not be available, so, since circumstances have not changed from last year’s upfront, we should use the same negotiating currency—live ratings.”

It makes me wonder why anybody bothers talking about or showing Live+ SD ratings data when the agencies will only use Live for charging rates. What’s the point?

The New York Times’ David Carr writes about the story. How many pieces has the Times done on this in the last week? Three?

When the Thomson-Bartiromo story broke, officials at CNBC issued a reflexive defense of its biggest star, saying, “Maria Bartiromo is one of the most prolific and well-respected financial journalists in the industry, who works tirelessly around the world in the service of business journalism.”

Yesterday the company added a further statement: “Maria Bartiromo’s journalistic integrity was never compromised nor would she or CNBC allow it to be. Any implication to the contrary is inaccurate.”

Hyperbole aside, the statement is true as far as it goes. But it ignores the reality that there is an implicit contract at play here. By making huge advertising buys on CNBC, Citigroup obtained access to its biggest star. Clearly, an exchange of brands was under way.

CNBC has positioned itself as an adjunct to business, the glowing friend in the corner with the sound off and a ticker at the bottom. In that respect, CNBC has roughly the same relationship to Wall Street that “Entertainment Tonight” has to Hollywood: boosterish, gossipy and more than a little starry-eyed.

Johnny Dollar has the video of Brian Wilson’s sign-off from Weekend Live…