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Shelly Palmer: Cyber Monday Sales Up 15%: MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer December 4, 2008

2008-12-04T09:43:15Z

The WSJ is reporting that former AOL Chief Executive Jonathan Miller maybe purchasing Yahoo for between $28-30 billion, roughly $22 a share. Yahoo's stock benefited from the rumor, up 7% to $11.50. While the rumor mill is heating up, it should be noted that Miller is still under a non complete agreement with AOL, which prohibited him from joining Yahoo's board over the summer.

Amazon may launch an HD streaming option for its Amazon Video on Demand service on TiVO. While the porthole is currently unavailable, it is expect that movies will play for two minutes while users are searching the library, giving them the option to purchase and download or store in an Amazon cloud. According to Bill Carr, Amazon's VP for digital media, "Our goal is to create an immersive experience where people can't help but get caught up in how exciting it is to simply watch a movie right from Amazon.com with a click of the button."

NBC News is expected to name chief White House correspondent David Gregory the new anchor on Meet the Press. Gregory, who will replace Tim Russert, recently hosted MSNBC's election night coverage and has been known to spare with White House officials on occasion. This sunday on Meet the Press, temporary anchor Tom Brokaw will interview President-elect Barack Obama.

Last night RIM announced that sales fell approximately 9% below its estimated projection. The BlackBerry manufacturer's subscriber growth also fell 10% below its forecasted rate. The good news for RIM is that Verizon Wireless is still sold out of the new BlackBerry Storm, which, if back in stock, could be a major holiday player.

Plus, today's consulting question, "Am I any closer to getting theatrical day-and-date released on VOD?" Shelly has the answer on today's MediaBytes.

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net

CNBC Staffers "Scared S***less" By Looming Cuts

2008-12-01T07:19:07Z

The network is understandably seeing record ratings, thanks to everyone from anxious office drones to stay-at-home moms who wouldn't necessarily know the Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) from a Labrador, all tuning in to monitor the nation's financial meltdown--and its effect on the value of their 401(k) accounts.

While the gallows humor continues, CNBC isn't exactly laughing all the way to the bank. Despite the yuks and the huge numbers, the network is now in the process of slashing as much as 10% from its budget. People at the network, says one staffer, "are scared s---less."

It is a different kind of corporate irony: As CNBC enjoys a new level of visibility and is about to launch a massive new marketing campaign to capitalize on the momentum, it must do so while navigating through the same flailing economy that has sent the network's proverbial stock soaring.

Since September, when the federal government took over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Lehman Brothers collapsed, CNBC has seen the best ratings of its 19-year history, breaking half a million viewers in mid-September for its business day programming (5 a.m. to 7 p.m.) and finishing the month with an average of 373,000 viewers, an increase of 46% compared to Sept. 2007. Among news' sales demographic of 25-54 year olds, business day programming averaged just over 100,000 viewers for the month, an increase from numbers that often leveled off in the five figures.

In October, the news was even better. CNBC averaged just over 500,000 viewers for the month for business day with 150,000 in the demo. So far, the network is up 66% in the fourth quarter compared to the same period last year.

As CNBC executives like to point out, these ratings represent in-home viewing only and do not take into account the sets tuned to CNBC on trading floors and in offices, airport lounges and health clubs. Indeed, walk into any New York City gym these days and CNBC has seemingly replaced ESPN in the cardio theater.

The network has generally been protected from company-wide contractions at parent company NBC Universal, thanks to what have been impressive profit margins (due to some of the highest CPM rates in television) and looming competition from the Fox Business Network, which launched in October 2007. That is, until now.

CNBC Bought Sarah Palin $300 In Clothes And Footwear

2008-11-26T15:04:04Z

Ethics disclosure forms recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act contained this oddity: $300 in clothes and footwear from ... CNBC.

Turns out that the network's Maria Bartiromo sat down with the Alaska governor in August, just days before she became John McCain's running mate. The interview about oil, energy and drilling was conducted in Palin's Anchorage office, where she wore her own suit and high heels, according to CNBC sources. The producers asked to continue the interview in the oil fields; since Palin didn't have outdoor gear at the office, a CNBC assistant raced out to buy a jacket and hiking shoes for the location shoot.

The network didn't give it another thought, but Palin dutifully reported it as a gift on her disclosure form.

5 Bones To Pick With Coverage Of The Crisis

2008-11-24T16:55:13Z

4. "Our lawmakers left and right are either fools, wolves, or pigs. None of them are ultimately serving the best interests of this country; we must treat them like the public employees they all are. We demand so much more accountability and transparency from our production assistants."

That came out of the mouth of Dylan Ratigan the other night, following an even more incoherent rant blaming the government and "bad legislation" for the entire economic crisis. Here is the truth, Dylan: There is this thing in America that we call elections. The vast majority of our lawmakers have to go through them every two years. Every single thing they do of significance is on the public record. Myriad insignificant things, too. But for years, Wall Street has exhibited only contempt for anyone on the government payroll who did not work for the Fed. This attitude was abetted and enabled by a Republican leadership that did not trust its own party members on the Financial Services Committee.

Pete Cenedella: Undoing Bush Tax Cuts May Prove Harder than Closing Guantanamo

2008-11-24T16:47:13Z

One of the most pernicious symptoms of the kind of shock and awe that the Bush administration has perpetrated on the public for so long is that we become exhausted, beaten down. We say uncle. And we get a little amnesiac -- we forget the offenses done in our names precisely because they were so spectacularly, unspeakably huge.

Watching Barack Obama's address to the nation on Saturday, and his transition press conferences, is like watching the grown-ups come home to the post-party mess left behind by the pimply-faced, reckless, drunk and clueless teens. While Obama is a lot cooler than the average hapless parent, Bush is, in effect, Tom Cruise in Risky Business: an apt analogy, as both W and Cruise have that sociopathic glaze in their gaze; neither seems able to connect, really, with reality, and both act as if no one else were in the scene. Both Bush and Cruise wield power despite appearing absolutely silly to millions of observers. And Scientology and Bushism, in fact, are not so dissimilar: both ask you to pony up lots of cash, you're promised ill-defined rewards that never come, there's an obsessive secrecy that is at once ridiculous and scary, and if you raise too many questions you're gone. But I digress.

As the Bushies skulk away from the scene of their high crimes and midsemeanors, those of us who have stopped up our ears and hummed loudly for the last few years in an effort to drown out the steady stream of bad news ("I'm not listening! LA LA LA!!!") might need a little refresher course in just how much the sober grown-ups have to deal with on this, the hungover morning after ugliest frat party ever thrown.

Christ almighty, where to begin?!? There's the Patriot Act, domestic spying, extraordinary rendition and torture -- exhibits 1A through 1D in the case against the Bush administration. There's also the tortured legal argument for the unitary executive branch and the destruction or burying of vital records. All of these were enacted under cover of the "global war on terror." But one big crusty vom-stain on our national carpet dates as far back as February 2001 (mere weeks into what at the time loomed as an unremarkable, possibly one-term and in any event stolen and illegitimate presidency), when the Bushies were stiff-arming congress on the one agenda item they came in with: massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, untethered to any real stimulus on economic growth or job creation.

On the campaign trail, of course, Obama pledged to undo the Bush tax cuts (which means, in effect, raising taxes on the wealthy), focusing instead on tax relief for the middle and working class. Conventional economic wisdom says you never raise taxes during a downturn, and Obama has been careful to frame his plan as a "net tax cut."

Does that shift in tax policy sound "ideological" to you? Me neither. But that was the word used to describe Obama's tax plan by CNBC's Charlie Gasparino, one of the weirdest and most high-strung television personalities not on FOX or Countdown. According to Gasparino, Obama's continued call to end the Bush tax cuts during today's economic team press event amounts to "class warfare." Gasparino, speaking on MSNBC's "The Politics of Money" this afternoon, said that Wall Street has been hoping that Obama's campaign pledge to revert to Clinton-era tax rates on upper-income Americans was just red meat for the Democratic base but that once elected he'd prove to be a centrist, "smart guy."

In other words, Gasperino is all for lying to get elected and then abandoning promises prior even to inauguration; and he apparently thinks investors agree that it's better for Obama to break campaign promises -- promises that inspired a wide majority to vote him in. In Gasparino's world it's not good for the economy to shift the tax burden back to a 1990s balance between top earners and everyone else. He also would have us believe that if you don't favor irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthy, you're not a "smart guy" -- even now, after eight years of turning working Americans upside-down and shaking every nickel, dime and penny out of their pockets.

Last time I checked, there was no evidence that those tax cuts were doing even their recipients much long-term good. After all, what's a few years of lower taxes if the price is an extended economic downturn that chokes profits, freezes credit markets, and destroys consumption? One would think that someone with as long a resume as Gasperino (Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, CNBC -- even a single HuffPost blog entry back in 2005!) would have noticed this too, and that he might see the tax cuts now in retrospect as the irresponsible job-killing machine they were.

Of course, who could have possibly predicted that Bush's non-ideological, smart-guy tax cuts would lead to economic ruin and loss of jobs?

Oh, that's right: a group of 460 mainstream economists, including 10 Nobel Prize winners, called it dead right in February 2003, all of them affixing their signatures to a statement that included the following nugget of wisdom:

...(T)here are now more than two million fewer private sector jobs than at the start of the current recession. Overcapacity, corporate scandals, and uncertainty have and will continue to weigh down the economy. The tax cut plan proposed by President Bush is not the answer to these problems. Regardless of how one views the specifics of the Bush plan, there is wide agreement that its purpose is a permanent change in the tax structure and not the creation of jobs and growth in the near-term.

The permanent dividend tax cut, in particular, is not credible as a short-term stimulus. As tax reform, the dividend tax cut is misdirected in that it targets individuals rather than corporations, is overly complex, and could be, but is not, part of a revenue-neutral tax reform effort.

Passing these tax cuts will worsen the long-term budget outlook, adding to the nation's projected chronic deficits. This fiscal deterioration will reduce the capacity of the government to finance Social Security and Medicare benefits as well as investments in schools, health, infrastructure, and basic research. Moreover, the proposed tax cuts will generate further
inequalities in after-tax income.

Wow, that sounds kind of like ... exactly what happened! Imagine that, almost 500 economists knew better than the ideologues in the Bush White House. They were right then, and Obama is right now to undo this mess -- just as he will be right on the day he shuts Guantanamo, renews our commitment to the Geneva Conventions on torture, and begins meaningful troop draw-down in Iraq. These actions will help make the United States the country that 53 percent of the electorate voted to live in.

The question is: what country does Charlie Gasparino live in? The answer, unfortunately, is that he lives in the same United States as the more obvious ideologues like Hannity and Limbaugh, a country where President Obama is not going to enjoy any kind of honeymoon and where the pressure to make Bush's insane and ineffective tax cuts permanent will grow louder as January 20th approaches.

UPDATE, 4:51PM Meanwhile, Gasparino blew a lot of hot air about how the market started falling in the middle of Obama's press conference as he spoke about undoing the Bush tax cuts. Memo to Charlie: the Dow closed up almost 400 points, for a total gain of over 900 since Obama's announcement Friday of Geithner as Treasury Secretary. I know you want to see investors punish Obama for his tax plan, but it looks like Wall Street is relieved to see a leader of action and competence for a change. Sorry, Charlie.

(For some great footage of Charlie Gasparino losing his mind on air, click here.

...And for cool T-shirts that celebrate Barack Obama, for grown-ups and kids alike, click here -- home of BARACK THE BUILDER, MY MAMA LOVES OBAMA and BARACK STAR. Great, inexpensive gifts for the holidays and inauguration time!

Read more: Msnbc, Taxes, Charlie Gasparino, Economy, Cnbc, Economic Crisis, Obama Transition, Barack Obama, Bush Tax Cuts, Politics News

Raymond J. Learsy: Oil Piracy, OPEC, Saudi Arabia, You and Me

2008-11-24T04:39:10Z
With the hijacking of the Saudi oil tanker Sirius Star and its 2 million barrels of oil, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia Prince Saud al-Faisal was moved to comment, "Piracy, like terrorism, is a disease which is against everybody and everybody must address it together." Spoken in the best Saudi parlance to which the most generous translation one could ascribe is, "Uncle Sam (with 20 plus ships operating in the Persian Gulf to east Africa including three super-carriers, the USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Ronald Reagan and USS Theodore Roosevelt), let me hold your jacket while you go ahead and tackle this mess for us, and when you've done what you've had to do, don't forget to thank us for helping you forgo a cleaning bill for your jacket."

The hijacking of a Saudi 318,000 ton VLCC (Very Large Cargo Carrier) came after a series of chastising pronouncements from OPEC evidencing indignation at the recently swift setback in the price of oil.

- In October OPEC members agreed to reduce supplies by 1.5 million barrels per day from November 1, or about 5 percent of their then daily production.

- On November 8th OPEC President Chakib Khelil announced that OPEC would reduce output of oil further if moves the previous month to slash production did not effectively bolster plummeting oil prices. That "prices should range between $70 and $90 per barrel."

- OPEC concurrently issued a statement reading "In the extremely volatile situation closer monitoring and more frequent intervention are required. OPEC will continue to carefully follow oil market developments ... and stands ready to take the necessary decisions to support oil market stability."

- On November 10th CNBC reported that Saudi Arabia's state oil company Aramco had advised at least five customers that they would receive 5 percent less than their "contracted allocation" (some contract).

- In the meanwhile as the speculators were routed and the economy was collapsing. the price of oil continued to sink, breaking $60 a barrel, (and now $50 a barrel) more than $87 below its summer high of $147/bbl.

- And then, on November 16th, as if by fortuitous fortune if you are long the oil market or if you are an OPEC producer and searching for a good reason to frighten the market one more time and to give a positive spin to oil prices, well hosannas! -- for the first time ever an unguarded Saudi Aramco oil tanker displacing 318,000 tons (the size of a small island) and sailing in splendid isolation 450 nautical miles off the Kenyan coast, is picked off by a band of pirates operating a motorized dinghy.

Coincidence?? You judge. And the fact that it didn't break the fall in oil prices is no fault of the pirates.

In fairness, Saudi Arabia did announce on Friday that it will join the NATO naval mission together with ships from India, Russia, Malaysia, by "contributing naval assets to help pursuing piracy."

Public relations ploy or serious commitment remains to be seen. Word and deed are too often at variance here to be taken at face value. One need only go back to Saudi Minister of Petroleum and Natural Resources Ali al-Naimi's proclamation in 2004. At that time he declared himself still in favor of the cartel's then $22-to-$28 price range, adding "the market desires a price of $35 a barrel because it is frightened of {the price rising to $50," and that the Saudis too were "frightened of that price." That was then and in the four years thereafter in oil's inexorable march to $147, the Saudis did little to stem the world's economic pain but continued to exacerbate oil price's excesses by steering OPEC to cut its production quotas again and again.

Were the Saudi announcement to be a serious commitment, it would be a welcome change in policies that have been blatantly self-serving. It would be a welcome recognition of its obligations as the custodian of the world's largest oil reserve, thereby vesting it with weighty responsibilities of prudent stewardship.

Read more: Opec, Cnbc, Saudi Arabia, Oil, Uncle Sam, Sirius Star, Aramco, Ali Al-Naimi, Chakib Kheklil, Somali Pirates, Vlcc, Pirates Ship Somalia, Business News

CNBC's Mark Haines Mocks Automakers: "Please Give Us Money, We Screwed It Up"

2008-11-19T11:51:38Z
CNBC Squawk On The Street anchor Mark Haines has spent a lot of time in the last week berating American automakers as they have been lobbying for a $25 billion bailout from Congress. As a vote likely nears, Haines has had more guests on his show to talk about the automakers and it seems to be making him more irritable.

While watching for what seems like an inevitable meltdown fight with auto reporter Phil LeBeau, we caught this moment of Haines employing a little voice to mock the automakers.

WATCH:

We're just minutes away from the big three on Capitol Hill. Today they're in the House wearing out their knees, making the case for a bailout: "Please give us money, we screwed it up really royally."

Co-anchor Erin Burnett can be heard being frustrated with Haines at the end of the clip.
Read more: Video, Automakers, Cnbc, Automaker Bailout, Erin Burnett, Mark Haines, Cars, Business News

Mark Haines Thinks Auto Promises Are Baloney

2008-11-14T12:47:42Z
CNBC Squawk On The Street anchor and reliable curmudgeon Mark Haines doesn't trust the Big Three automakers -- Ford, GM and Chrysler -- to behave with government aid. He predicts that the automakers will promise to make environmentally-friendly cars and won't ever actually do it.

Then CNBC auto reporter Phil LeBeau comes in, trying to defend the long lead time the auto industry would need to create "green cars," and Haines railroads him, too. Erin Burnett tries, as she often does, to keep the peace.

WATCH:

HAINES: Never. They will never make good on those promises. They will do what the banks have done and what everyone else has done -- they'll tell us one thing to get the money and once they get the money, forget it.

LEBEAU: Mark, it's a long-lead business. I mean you can say you're gonna make green cars, who's gonna be able to check for another two or three years?

HAINES: You know what, Phil? I mean, I'm sorry. But the American auto industry drove itself off a cliff, OK? It drove itself off a cliff.

Read more: Cnbc, Chrysler, Video, Gm, Mark Haines, Ford, Cars, Green Cars, Business News

Mark Haines Thinks Treasury Treats US Like Mushrooms: Kept In Dark, Fed BS

2008-11-12T13:35:33Z
CNBC's Squawk On The Street anchor Mark Haines had a unique analogy for the way he thinks the Treasury Department has been handling the economic rescue plan. He's pretty steamed about a perceived lack of transparency and consistency in Treasury's communications.

When discussing the economy with CNBC's Steve Liesman and co-anchor Erin Burnett, Haines said he said he no longer wanted to be treated like a "mushroom."

WATCH:

HAINES: "I'd like somebody to tell me -- not to treat me like a mushroom. You know how they grow mushrooms. They keep them in the dark and they feed them bovine fecal matter. OK? And That's what they've been doing with us."

Read more: Treasury Department, Video, Economy, Treasury Department Transparency, Federal Reserve, Mark Haines Mushroom, Cnbc, Bailout, Finance, Mark Haines, Financial Crisis, Banks, Squawk on the Street, Treat Me Like a Mushroom, Business News

Dr. Tian Dayton: An Integrated National Psyche

2008-11-05T09:05:47Z
Integration is a word often used by psychologists to describe a psychological state in which we are consciously consolidating the various parts of our inner world into a coherent whole. The thought behind "psychological integration" is that a lack of it is weakening to the self. That if parts of our larger "self" are banished from consciousness; we suffer an essential lack of inner wholeness. When we disown parts of ourselves we undermine our own ability to see and own the full picture, to make intelligent choices that take all of our various sides into account. We make it harder for ourselves to follow through on our own decisions because we aren't working with and mobilizing all of our parts. Valuable psychic energy that could be used in service of our own forward movement gets held in an unconscious, psychic frozenness. Certainly this same theory can apply to a country.

Last night, through the election of an African-American president, we are, as a country, allowing parts of our national psyche to become integrated into a coherent whole, into a working model of our national self. It is a stunning moment in our history as a country no matter what our political leanings. The idea behind psychic integration is that it makes the individual healthier and more whole, that it allows for previously tied up emotional, psychic and hence physical energy to become mobilized in service of the self, in service of moving forward into more of life. It seems no great stretch to apply these same principles to our national psyche. While parts of our population are disowned, don't we drain our own potential energy and intelligence as a national being? What ever our political leanings and preferences, we are a society of many races, this is who we are. Following this line of thinking, last night we became more of who we are, we allowed the hidden and banished parts of national psyche to be integrated into a coherent whole in service of a more fully integrated self.

Two very meaningful and historic speeches were given last night. John McCain's speech was a powerful and moving call for psychic integration. Whatever the campaign was or wasn't, last night he did not foster or encourage the fracturing of our psychic energies, he did not allow us to boo or hate parts of who we are, rather he called for a kind of acceptance and integration of our national psyche in service of our self as a nation. His words, "we are Americans, we don't give up" took on a new meaning, especially coming from someone who did not give up under circumstances that most of us can never even allow ourselves to imagine.

Last night Barack Obama's very presence on stage along with Joe Biden's family was a speech in itself, it said what words cannot touch and what history has not known how to manage. It allowed us to become whole, to consciously integrate who we already are, to bring split off parts of ourselves under our conscious control and to take responsibility for them so that we can mobilize heretofore tied up psychic energy toward the task of moving forward. Obama's words "yes we can," echoed toward a future that we are daring to imagine that we can co-create. Whatever our political leanings, last night we became a more integrated, coherent and whole national psyche.

Read more reaction from HuffPost bloggers to Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election
Read more: Cnbc, Presidential Politics, Colin Powell, Psychological Stability, Healthy Lifestyle, Election Day, Psychological, Integration, Climate Change, Civil Rights, President Barack Obama, Race Relations, President Obama, Obama Administration, Barack Obama, Obama African-Americans, Politics News

CNBC Anchors Have Bizarre Argument Over "Whaddya Got?"

2008-11-04T23:26:47Z
We missed it, but apparently Dylan Radigan and Charlie Gasparino almost broke into their famous "What Do You Got" routine (see here for the first time). Here's how a tipster explained the exchange:

FYI - Gasparino just flipped again on his 'don't say what'dya got to me' thing. Ratigan let is slip again and immediately apologized but it was too late. Even Maria asked 'what is with you guys and this thing?'
Read more: CNBC Whaddya Got, Cnbc, Video, CNBC What Do You Got, CNBC Fight, Charlie Gasparino, Dylan Ratigan, Business News

Steve Parker: October car/truck sales reports - Fuel for Obama campaign

2008-11-01T23:52:23Z
This Monday, the new car and truck sales reports for the month of October will be announced, and are expected to be the worst in 25-or-more years.

Those numbers should be used to bring more voters to the polls the next day, solid members of the Democratic Party and those who might vote that way for the first time. Democratic candidates and volunteers working phone banks in some key states should use these numbers to convince those still (somehow) undecided or too depressed by their own economic situation to vote to do something positive and vote for Barack Obama and other Democrats running for office, locally, statewide and nationally.

Friday on CNBC, an auto industry analyst said that if General Motors were to go bankrupt, more than two million Americans would lose their jobs, including those working directly for GM, at their hundreds of supplier companies, all of their dealership personnel - the list goes on and on.

And several analysts agree that GM is burning through $1 billion a month - in cash they don't have.

GM's cash condition is so bad that one of their most important new high-mileage vehicles, the Chevrolet Cruze, could be delayed in the US until 2011 or longer, while the car is now being built and sold in South Korea and plans call for building and selling it in Europe in March, 2009. And GM's much-vaunted Volt plug-in hybrid may also be delayed for the same reason - no cash for production start-up.

(Chevy's Cruze, top, was introduced at the Paris Car Show in October, but the US version of the high-mileage car may be delayed until 2011; GM VP Robert Lutz, 76, introduces the Volt plug-in hybrid at last year's Detroit Auto Show, and Volt may also be delayed because the company doesn't have the amount of cash necessary for starting its production).

Candidates and volunteers in car- and parts-making states like Michigan, Alabama, Texas, California, Ohio, Tennessee, Mississippi, Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey, New York and more should use these numbers when talking to voters.

At this point, merger talks between GM and Chrysler have ended; those two told Washington that another $10 billion, in addition to the $25 billion already going to Detroit, was going to be needed to finance any merger.

Discussions between Chrysler and Nissan/Renault have also stopped.

As recently as August, John McCain vigorously opposed a bailout for Detroit. According to
www.MotorAuthority.com, "His (McCain's) stance thus far is that it's not the role of the government to be a crutch to these businesses, a view also shared by current president George W. Bush."

(Barack Obama has consistently told Americans about the importance of the auto industry to the country, and that creating a new, green car-making industry will help the nation and the world; French car-maker Renault, which also controls Nissan, has advanced technology thanks to their involvement in Formula 1 racing, but their talks with Chrysler about a merger have ended).

Also in August, the Detroit News reported that, "Barack Obama has previously vocalized his support for loan programs for domestic manufacturers, including 'loans and tax credits to retool the nation's auto plants and build the next generation of American cars'. Obama has also previously spoken about his desire to see the American auto industry at the forefront of technology for next-generation cars, rather than lagging behind as it is now."

Many of this Blog's visitors have said, essentially, that when it comes to the Detroit Three, "Let them go out of business - They did it to themselves, anyway."

And I couldn't agree more - but only with the second half of that statement.

Realistically, with the specter of two million unemployed Americans looming on the horizon if just one of the Detroit Three goes bankrupt in the US, can our economy afford to support, re-train and create new jobs for those workers? And should Washington step into this situation at all with tax payers' money?

I say, again, that the Detroit Three should merge into one single large car-maker, and I think most Americans would be thrilled to support this new company - But only if they engineer, design and sell the right cars and trucks for this marketplace. And one company will assure there are no "winners" and "losers" among the Detroit Three. I think that's important to the companies and the country.

And the money, time and effort necessary to help those laid-off by this merger can be factored into any plan to "re-do" Detroit.

Help with home mortgages, extending unemployment payments, help with car/truck loans and leases, aid to families with students in college, re-training - and the establishment of hundreds of thousands of new jobs for America's new green economy - can all be planned for before any merger occurs.

The economies of scale and being able to take advantage of all of the $25 or $50 billion bailout and sheer patriotism will help this new company succeed.

Remember that Washington is not just throwing money at this problem and hoping it will go away; the new company is expected to make and sell the best cars and trucks in the world, and payback Washington (and us), at the lowest possible interest rates (about 4.5%, or about a third of what they're paying for money now), and do it within 25 years; Washington can defer payback for five years.

All this information, coupled with Monday's bad news about car/truck October sales should be used to sway America and its workers to help Barack Obama become President-elect of the United States of America - the very next day.

Visitor Bonus! For those interested in the new clean diesel engines being offered by Volkswagen, Audi and Mercedes-Benz this year, and from the Detroit Three next year, Mercedes-Benz has created a fun, easy-to-navigate and informative Website to explain the new technology. Click anywhere on this line to visit ... And enjoy (but only after voting!).
Read more: Iowa, Chrysler, George W. Bush, Cars, Detroit News, Detroit Auto Show, Ford, Democratic Party, Robert Lutz, Mississippi, Bailout, New Jersey, General Motors, Paris Car Show, Tennessee, Nissan, Michigan, Renault, John McCain, California, Gm, Cnbc, Indiana, Detroit Three, Ohio, French, Washington DC, Chrysler Nissan Deal, Barack Obama, New York, Texas, Chevrolet Volt, Chevrolet Cruze, Alabama, Politics News

Summer Rayne Oakes: Journey to the Center of a Windmill

2008-10-31T15:38:00Z

In between doing some Planet Green events I've been filming for G Word, one of Discovery's new shows. Here's a recap on one of my favorite episodes. Stay tuned for some clips, bloopers, and the stuff Discovery doesn't want you to see!

About Me and "G"
I guess they know I'm comfortable in the grit and the glamour because that is exactly what I'll be covering for G Word-a show about all the oddities and goodies of "green." You can watch me tackle ocean trash, dance on top of windmills, sniff out garbage, and plod through cow poo. Unfortunately I'm still waiting for the glamorous part of my job to kick in...

"I imagine putting up a windmill is quite a big undertaking," I said to Ned Hall, President of AES Wind Energy. "Yes, very much so," he responded. "So when one is going up, do you notify the community that you are having a big erection?" Oh yes I did, I said it. Bam, Bam, Bam. (joke I got compliments of W. LaDuke)

A windmill kisses the wind.

Journey to the Center of a Windmill
Where: Abilene, TX--the "Friendly Frontier" of wind energy and the U.S. city with the most churches per square mile (as told to me by a Wiccan cab driver who picked us up from the airport).

What: Explore wind energy and what it means to us

Why: Because gas isn't cheap or green and wind seems like a cool, viable alternative

"It's kinetic art," Ned Hall, President of AES Wind Energy said to me as we looked out over the miles and miles of magnificent white wind turbines. The rotating blades were hypnotizing, leisurely spinning their 120ft arms in the wind. The blades may only turn 20 revolutions per minute, but the 20 mph winds were enough to whip our hard hats off as we craned our necks David-&-Goliath-style to ogle at the impressive structures that easily rival the Statue of Liberty in height.

The producers told me I'll be climbing to the top of the windmills. Ha! Good thing I didn't tell them I am terrified of heights until we were in the safety training. They seemed pretty pissed that I didn't let them in on that important tidbit of information beforehand. Hell, I didn't even know you could climb up the belly of a windmill. What's in there anyway? How does it convert wind to electricity? And what does it look like from the top of a turbine? I guess my curiosity totally outweighed my acrophobia, because I had a blast climbing to the top to salute the breeze.

What can you do?

Call your energy supplier to find out if you can purchase environmentally-friendly energy alternatives like wind;

Like to play the stock market? Invest in wind energy companies;

Offset your travel emissions with accredited companies like Native Energy, which re-invests the money into wind energy projects

Get involved in the alternative energy revolution. Support or get involved in organizations like Energy Action, Green for All, 1 Sky, and others.

Sign up for Power Vote, whose goal is to get 1,000,000 young citizens supporting clean energy solutions, which will be unveiled at the next Powershift Feb 27-Mar 2 in Washington, D.C.

"I stand erected"
These are the scenes Planet Green didn't want you to see...Coming soon...Coming soon. Coming soon.

At a windmill construction site in Abilene, TX

This is how big they are!

Free, clean energy: Wind and Solar!

Line 'em up!

Energy Action, pin-up style

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you. That is a Campus Climate Challenge pin.

Filming at the wind turbine erection site.

Shafted! Yah, I'm not just showing you this for posterity's sake. I actually climbed up this monster! 250 ft into the air on the belly of a windmill. How about that!?!

That's me in the top of the wind turbine, standing on the gears.

And this is my view from the top...Prepare yourself...

My view from the top! Windmills as far as the eye can see.

The answer is a resounding "YES!" I did get to hang over the edge of the windmill's nose.

Lovely view. Lovely view.

Read more: Wind Power, Energy, G Word, Solar, S Renewable Energy, Discovery, Cnbc, Windmills, Renewable Energy, Alternative Energies, Wind Energy, Climate Change, Climate Change Action, Wind Turbines, Discovery Planet Green, Entertainment News

Ari Melber: Would Obama's Victory Hurt Obama?

2008-10-30T00:55:25Z
If Sen. Barack Obama wins the presidential election, will that victory undermine his political future?

What a stupid question, you might be thinking. I can't believe I even clicked on the headline. This kind of bizarro logic, however, is percolating in the political media. The cable shows have been talking about how a Democratic sweep could ultimately hurt the Democratic Party. "Democrats See Risk and Reward if Party Sweeps" blared a recent New York Times headline. OpenLeft Blogger Chris Bowers slices through this madness in a post Wednesday:

Look, the raison d'etre of electorally focused political party is to win as many elections as possible. To argue that winning more seats is somehow a negative for any political party is exactly as stupid as arguing that it is bad for a sports team to win a championship. To even attempt an argument that winning an election is bad for a party is to enter the final level of concern troll mastery...

Speculative punditry is riddled with concern troll ticks, of course. Some editors and producers also like the "man-bites-dog" quality of these stories.

On a personal note, I'll never forget when I was invited on CNBC to debate whether Obama would be weakened by winning another primary. I am not exaggerating -- the segment was titled "Mississippi: Will Win Weaken Obama?" I pointed out that winning primaries was the point of these campaigns.

Yet, as everyone prematurely obsesses over a massive Democratic sweep -- which has not happened yet and may not happen -- we'll hear even more contrarian craziness. But, for the record, here's one safe prediction: The winner of this election will not be hurt by his victory.

--
Ari Melber is covering the Obama campaign for The Washington Independent, blogging from the road here and Twittering here.

Read more: Polls, Obama Bias, Cnbc, Msm, Chris Bowers, Media Prediction, Barack Obama, Blog Msm, Open Left, Media Bias, Politics News

Jim Cramer: "It Is Harder To Get It Right Than Any Time I Have Seen In My Career"

2008-10-20T07:28:21Z
On "Mad Money" he now makes fewer recommendations and is hitting the button marked "House of Pain" a lot more often than the one marked "House of Pleasure," but tearing the horns off a bull does not make it any more relevant to an economy rendered in fragile china.

Mr. Cramer will never be Suze Orman, telling you how to carefully handle the money you have left. He is a blue sky kind of guy, a creature of a fast-fading era. The viewers still shout "Booyah," when they call in, but nobody, including Mr. Cramer, is feeling it.

"We are still going to try and find things, but it's harder to have a good batting average. It is harder to get it right than any time I have seen in my career," he said.
Read more: Television, Cnbc, Tv, Jim Cramer, Media News

CNBC Banking On Jim Cramer

2008-10-20T07:28:15Z
CNBC HOST Jim Cramer is back in the news. For most TV personalities, that would be a good thing. But since it's Cramer we're talking about, PR can get a little dicey. Especially at such a critical time for his employer.

As you may have heard, the legendarily excitable Cramer has been telling viewers, on NBC's "Today" and elsewhere, to bail out of stocks and grab any cash they'll need over the next five years. Some critics are now accusing the former money manager of helping to spur a selling panic amid one of the worst financial crises the country has ever seen.

"How about this?" Cramer proposed when we discussed his controversial role in the crisis last week. "How about I said, 'Yeah, I did it.'? You know what kind of hubris that is?" On the word "hubris," his voice suddenly rose to a near-whistle, the way it often does when dispatching callers on his dizzying, buzzer-laden, stock-picking extravaganza "Mad Money."

"I'm not Warren Buffett!" he added.

That last part is indisputably true. Yet Cramer is now the standard-bearer of a network that, because of the Wall Street meltdown, is back in the spotlight once again.

It's been nearly a decade since CNBC's glory years, back in the heady era of day traders and the Internet boom. Now ratings are soaring as nervous investors mop up any info they can get about the market malaise.

Network executives say they're on track for a second straight year of record profits. This despite early reports that heavy advertisers such as credit-card and mortgage companies are pulling back on spending as quickly as they can. But the brass insists that the panic of '08 will be a good thing for the NBC Universal-owned network, which aims to deliver business news to affluent investors.
Read more: Television, Cnbc, Jim Cramer CNBC, Tv, Jim Cramer, Media News

Business Press Sees Record Numbers

2008-10-14T08:49:35Z
The financial crisis means more Americans are interested in business news, which is helping business media across various mediums.

In TV, TVNewser reports that CNBC just saw its best week ever and is on pace for its best month ever:

For Business Day programming (5am-7pmET), CNBC averaged 570,000 Total Viewers the week of Oct. 6. That's up 5% from the previous high set the week before. CNBC also had its best week in 7 1/2 years in the A25-54 demo averaging 153,000 viewers.

With two weeks of October data, CNBC is having its best month ever averaging 555,000 Total Viewers; more than doubling last October's viewership.

Although magazines can't follow the market's every move in the print edition, Women's Wear Daily reports that financial magazines' websites are booming:

Figures from Nielsen Online show that for the month of September -- even before the real market meltdown began -- unique visitors to Cnnmoney.com, the Web home of Fortune, Money, and Fortune Small Business, jumped 30 percent to 10 million, and page views surged 142 percent, to 257 million, compared with September 2007. Businessweek.com saw a 25 percent surge in visitors, to four million, while page views jumped 84 percent to 20 million. Forbes.com reported a 4 percent growth in unique visitors, to eight million, and a 17 percent growth in page views, to 126 million. Portfolio.com's unique visitors totaled one million and page views two million in September, but the site's traffic was too small to be tracked by Nielsen Online last September.

Finally, even newspapers are getting in on the action, as Reuters reports that the Financial Times is boasting about four key successes:

Newsstand sales rose 30 percent in the United States in September, and about 20 percent in Europe and Asia. That's compared to August 2008, i.e., it's a "sequential" gain rather than year-over-year growth. In the United Kingdom, Ridding said, "We basically couldn't print enough copies and retailers were running out."

The number of registered users of FT.com rose to 750,000 now, compared with 30,000 a year ago. Some of this growth of course, came from pulling back the curtain last November. But Ridding said a couple hundred thousand of those showed up in the past few months, as the mortgage and housing crisis in the United States deepened and then metastasized into full-blown world-market-crisis mode. (Here's how registration and subscription works at FT.com)

During one week, Ridding noted, page views hit 25 million, more than double the normal amount. Ridding's conclusion: "What [the crisis] is doing for our readership and audience is pretty remarkable. I think it really underlines this idea that at a time of turmoil, people really do need trusted guides, and are prepared to pay." (The Journal, if anyone's wondering, logged 21.7 million visitors at its website, up 110 percent from last year. It's hard to tell whether the figure is comparable.)

During the week of Sept. 22, online page views were up 300 percent, and monthly unique visitors were up 250 percent compared with last year. The United States is pitching in so far, producing the largest number of unique users.

Read more: BusinessWeek.Com, CNBC Ratings, Cnbc, Portfolio.com, Portfolio, Financial TImes, CNNMoney.Com, Business Media, Media News

During Frantic Trading, Rick Santelli Finds Toupee On Trading Floor (VIDEO)

2008-10-10T15:00:01Z
CNBC reporter Rick Santelli found(?) a toupee on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade during one of the most eye-popping days of trading in history. As stock prices plummeted and volatility soared, Santelli said that people were losing not only their shirts, but also their hair.

Adding insult to injury for the owner of the apparently denuded head, Erin Burnett adds, "Wow, it has a bad part-line, too."

WATCH:

Read more: CNBC Toupee, Cnbc, Chicago Board of Trade, Toupee, Finance, Trading Floor Toupee, Economy, Rick Santelli, Trading Floor, Personal Finance, Toupee on Trading Floor, Stock Trader Loses Toupee, Video, Business News

Yvette Kantrow: The Washington Post's Howie Kurtz Blame Financial Press for Economic Crisis

2008-10-10T14:45:14Z
So big cheese media critic Howard Kurtz has spoken: The business media is partly to blame for our economic crisis.

"As in the savings-and-loan scandal of the late 1980s, the press was a day late and several dollars short," Kurtz declared in his Washington Post column last week. While he allows that some of the financial system's woes "were conveyed in incremental stories--and a few whistle-¬blowing columns--the business press never conveyed a real sense of alarm until institutions began to collapse."

Kurtz, who hosts a weekly CNN gabfest, is not the only media critic chastising the press for failing to warn people that financial Armageddon was near. (See the Columbia Journalism Review's The Audit.) But he is the most mainstream of the bunch, and his piece, accordingly, was filled with various éminences grises of financial journalism admitting that, yes, we all failed to see disaster coming.

"What we didn't understand was that this was building up," CNBC's Charles Gasparino tells Kurtz. "We all bear responsibility to a certain extent."

That's true. Only a fool would argue that the media could not have done a better job at sounding the alarm in the years leading up to the credit crisis--though what other part of the media is expected to make long-term predictions? We all know that the media, like the market itself, is a bullish creature. But columns like Kurtz's are also wrongheaded on two fronts: First, they make you want to ask, "Well, Howie, what were you doing while the rest of us were busy missing the big story?" (Well, gabbing on CNN.) And second, they fail to tell us exactly what kind of stories would have prevented us from ending up in the predicament we're in now.

Kurtz admits some stories were indeed done--there were dozens of housing bubble pieces, and there were prescient warnings from The New York Times' Gretchen Morgenson about credit default swaps--though you do wonder how deep Kurtz's reading goes. But, he argues, the media didn't put all the pieces together and warn us that the banking system was about to fall off a cliff.

In short, the media failed to fully predict the future, an easy observation to make with the benefit of hindsight.

Kurtz offers several stereotypical reasons for this failure: the difficulty in taking on "masters of the financial universe," especially when times are good; a tendency to lionize CEOs; the ghettoization of business news; pushback from corrupt companies. And while all those things may play a role, they don't address a more disturbing problem: Could anybody--on Wall Street, in Washington, in the newsroom--really foresee the path of this disaster? Or have our markets and our financial institutions gotten so large and complex that no amount of journalistic derring-do could have resulted in stories foreseeing the fall, in quick succession, of three Wall Street titans, a couple of big banks and an insurance giant?

And just imagine if a doomsday piece predicting such widespread destruction had appeared. Who would have believed it? Who would have run it? As the managing editor of Fortune, Andy Serwer, told Kurtz, "If we had written stories in late 2000 saying this whole thing's going to collapse, people would have said, 'Ha ha, maybe,' and gone about their business."

Serwer is right. Media Maneuvers summarily dismissed a Portfolio cover story by Jesse Eisinger last year that predicted Bear Stearns Cos. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. would lose their independence and "takeover speculation" surrounding Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch & Co. would reheat. Oops. Our bad. But ignoring such prophecies of doom and gloom isn't unusual. For one thing, such pieces are highly speculative by nature--where's the smoking gun--and if they come out too early in the cycle, they disappear into the bubble-filled ether. As a journalist, if you make a dire prediction, you'd better be correct soon. Otherwise, everyone just moves on.

But getting into the game too late doesn't work, either. Witness the blame heaped on the media (not to mention the shorts) for "bringing down" Bear and Lehman by speculating on their survival. When it comes to the prediction game, the window of opportunity is very small.

Read more: Cnbc, Howie Kurtz, Washington Post, Portfolio Magazine, Andy Serwer, Fortune, Economy, Columbia Journalism Review, Media News

Betsy Perry: Is There A 12-Step Program For CNBC Addicts? Nowhere To Hide

2008-10-10T13:58:49Z
Tearing myself away from my OCD with CNBC I ran to lunch at Michael's the other day fearing I'm isolated now that my consulting work is vanishing faster than the puffy smoke at the Vatican that signals a new pope — or is it a dead one? Poof and there goes my monthly retainer while I sit glued to watching my equity sink, lip-synching to every whisper of hope from Erin Burnett and Mark Haines.

My hope had been to leave the city after lunch and head to my pink and green pad-let in South Beach where I would take advantage of a Jewish holiday and Chris Columbus's first step on our soil — way pre FOMC days when Isabella and Ferdinand used gold coins. Wonder what the price of gold was then??

Michael's was beyond frenetic with table hopping I'd not witnessed before and I felt as if I was dining on the Titanic before the ship went down. Only thing missing was playing of "Nearer my God to Thee"; Joy Behar was being applauded for her view against Elizabeth Hasselbeck and Star Jones was seated at the front table — like who cares about her anymore? There was too much celebration and even with Cobb Salads going for $35 a half portion, it had the feeling of the Last Supper if in fact that supper was fun.

I made a quick stop with my financial advisor who is a wizard and maybe the only one I know relishing a down market. The only sign of nervousness was the smell of cigarette smoke in her office which you never notice anymore..

While my usual plan is to hit the vintage shops in SB, you know I'm feeling the lack of a paycheck when I obviously am as fearful of buying Walgreen's $9 flip flops as I am of buying a $450 Dior leopard print bag in mint condition. Instead of buying my customary street fair $20 orchid plant and fresh flowers at Wild Oats I buy devilled eggs and sliced turkey.

And don't tell anyone that I filched some extra Q-tips at the gym while recycling my water bottle.

I have always put myself on a budget down here except for the vintage shopping excursions (lusting after that bag and it is a bargain). I drive a pink bike, share a ride from the airport and swim at the public pool. I use my co-existing ubiquitous gym membership and gave up my favorite trainer, Kellie, for classes that are way too hard for me.

In fact, other than sunshine and palm trees, I'm still watching CNBC from either my bed or my gym and my treat today — one mojito for $13.

Maybe I'll save up enough not buying flip flops and flowers to rationalize the Dior bag? Iffy.
Read more: Financial Crisis, Cnbc, Michael's, Lunch at Michael's, Wall Street Crisis, Business News

Charles Warner: CNBC Served the Public

2008-10-06T16:51:14Z
On Thursday morning, after the Senate passed the bailout/rescue/recovery legislation, I got up and began watching CNBC. Then, in an act of self-flagellation, I turned to the Fox Business Network. In a previous blog entry I had referred to Fox Business as "Fox Bimbo News," and I wanted to see if it had miraculously improved its coverage of the biggest business story in the history of America.

I should have known better, because I don't believe in astrology or miracles. Fox Business was still bimbo news in spite of the outrageously misleading advertising and promotion that you would expect from a news network under the leadership of Fox's Roger Ailes, the Karl Rove of the media. It was under Ailes that Fox News promoted itself with the Brave-New-World, Huxlian, totally untrue slogans "fair and balanced" and "we report, you decide."

One of the reasons I had decided to watch Fox Business's coverage of the financial crisis was because the day before I watched CNBC as it covered the markets and the Senate consideration and passage of the originally called bailout bill, which by Wednesday was being called a rescue bill. By Friday when the House passed it, the bill was called the recovery bill. But on Wednesday, while I was watching CNBC, I was upset by a Fox Business commercial that ran in a local break that claimed, falsely that "we own the story." Fox Business also claimed in the commercial that it had more live shots and was covering the story while CNBC was airing infomercials. All of these claims, I later learned from a story in The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/business/media/03fox.html?scp=1&sq=fox%20business&st=cse , were based on the previous weekend - totally out of context, and a completely unfair, deceptive claim.

But what should anyone expect from a Fox property lead by Ailes, formerly a political consultant for Richard Nixon and the Republicans. Who do you think Karl Rove learned his dirty tricks from? I asked myself, should time Warner cable have accepted the ad to run while viewers were watching CNBC? Was that fair? I decided that while it probably was not fair, Time Warner didn't have a strong enough reason to turn it down during tough economic times when it wanted all of the ad revenue it could get. Nevertheless, the Fox Business ad turned me off with its false, misleading, nasty claims. It was clearly gorilla marketing and attack advertising down in the gutter with current Republican attack advertising.

The rule in advertising is that when you are way behind and have no chance of catching up by talking about your own brand's benefits, you go negative and attack your competitors. Ad guru David Ogilvy warned about this tactic and recommended never even mentioning a competitor in an ad because he knew that up to 33 percent of the people who see that ad think it's for the wrong brand. The one thing you know when a brand mentions a competitor in an ad is that that brand is not number one - it's usually way behind, as Fox Business is. Ever see an ad for a Rolex that claims it's "better than a Timex?" Of course not.

According to The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/business/media/03fox.html?scp=1&sq=fox%20business&st=cse Fox Business has "...never drawn an audience large enough to be considered statistically reliable by Nielsen for an extended time period." But according to that same article, Fox Business had its best day ever, with an average of 81,000 homes between 1 p.m. and 10 p.m. watching on Monday when the House turned down the then-called bailout bill. CNBC's audience was over 900,000 for the same time period of time.

So I was one viewer of a miniscule Fox Business audience on that Thursday, but I stuck it out as long as I could bear - through Degan McDowell and Brian Sullivan, who co-anchor between 10 a.m. and 12 noon. Brian didn't really understand what was going on and Degan was the most obnoxious lock-jaw anchor I've ever seen on national or local television.

During that painful time that was like hearing fingernails scratched on a chalkboard for me, I did see several promotion spots for Fox Business that were virtually the same as the commercials I had seen the day before on the local break within CNBC programming. I suppose they were making the same claims on the theory that if you tell a lie often enough some people will believe it. But with the teeny weensy Fox Business audience, even if the lies stick, it won't make any difference. Fox Business was running promos because it couldn't sell enough ads to fill the empty slots. Any smart advertiser would be on CNBC, which had the biggest audience in its history, and deservedly so.

During those agonizing hours, I noticed the lead story on Fox Business was about GE and how two days before Warren Buffett had invested $3 billion in GE. A surprisingly bright reporter did a fairly thorough job of explaining what a difficult position GE was in because over 40 percent of its profits came from GE Capital, which because of the crisis was in deep, deep financial doo doo.

When I had watched CNBC earlier, from around 9 to 10:30 a.m., its lead story had been how the Senate had loaded the now-called rescue bill with pork. Knowledgeable CNBC anchors and reporters detailed the pork earmarks and explained the political reasons for them. I felt strongly that the pork story was clearly the lead. So why had Fox Business lead with GE and try to make GE look bad?

I'm shocked, shocked that Fox Business would corrupt its business journalism judgment and bury the obvious lead in order to try to put a bad light on GE, the owner of their avowed enemy, CNBC. That's Ailes for you.

I called my good friend Neil Derrough, who is the former V.P. and general manager of WBBM-TV when Bill Kurtis was the highest-rated anchor in Chicago, of WCBS-TV when Jim Jensen was a top-rated anchor, was president of the CBS-owned television stations division, and President of highly rated KNSD-TV in San Diego. I mention these gigs because Neil is one of the most astute television executives I know and is a keen and knowledgeable critic of television news. He's also fairly conservative and a sometimes (though not often) fan of Fox News on cable. I thought he'd give me an objective opinion of how CNBC did covering the bailout/rescue/recovery story of last week.

Neil said that he thought the CNBC's coverage was "insightful and evenhanded - much better than any other cable news network such as CNN, Fox, or MSNBC." He praised CNBC's production values, and we discussed how much we both liked the way CNBC did split screens during Paulson and Bernanke's testimony showing them testifying on one screen and the second-by-second effect it was having on the stock markets and the dollar versus other currencies.

I asked Neil if he liked the multi-guest screens - six of them at once some times - and he said, "yes, I like a cross-section of views, especially when the guests are as good as CNBC's are." Finally, Neil said that in the time of financial crisis that CNBC stepped up to the plate and provided an important and much needed public service in the best journalistic tradition.
The jazz great Jack Teagarden and the incomparable Louis Armstrong sang a duet in a song in which Armstrong sings, "I like what you like," and Teagarden responds with, "and that's what I like about you." Neil Derrough and I could sing the same duet. CNBC did a magnificent public service last week. Thanks, CNBC.

Read more: Cnbc, Wall Street Crisis, Bailout, Media News

Jim Cramer Admits: "I Screwed Up" In Recommending Wachovia Stock Two Weeks Ago Because I Liked The CEO

2008-09-30T13:49:32Z
Jim Cramer apologized Monday on "Mad Money" for recommending that his viewers buy Wachovia stock just two weeks ago, a recommendation he acknowledged was spurred by the appearance of his longtime friend and former boss, Wachovia CEO Bob Steel, on his program.

WATCH: Cramer And Steel Talk About Financial Crises

On September 15, Cramer had Steel on the show and later advised viewers to buy Wachovia stock. Watch:

Monday, Cramer said he "screwed up" because he "wasn't skeptical enough," admitting, "I let my judgment of Steel cloud my thinking about Wachovia." Watch (full comments below):

I let you down, cause I wasn't skeptical enough. I have to presume when it comes to banking right now there is no objective truth, just negative, just terrible things. I let my judgment of Steel cloud my thinking about Wachovia. Is he to blame? Did he take advantage of me? Perhaps yes. But ultimately I must be a firewall for you and this time I let the firewall down.

Here's the bottom line: if we had a plan, Wachovia might've been able to split into a good bank and a bad bank and be saved. Wachovia was overtaken by events. Still, I have no choice: I gotta put my friend Bob Steel on the Wall of Shame. You know what? I should put myself in the annex. I didn't protect you good, I didn't protect you better. I screwed up, I apologize.

Andrew Ross Sorkin referenceed Cramer's recommendation in a New York Times article Tuesday morning headlined, "What Goes Before A Fall? On Wall Street, Reassurance." Here's an excerpt:

It didn't help that Mr. Cramer later told his TV audience to buy Wachovia, calling it one of only a few potential "winners" in the $700 billion bailout being proposed, and said that Mr. Steel's background as the former Treasury under secretary meant he had "a better handle on how this process works than anyone else."

On Mr. Cramer's show Monday night, he spent an entire segment apologizing to his viewers about having Mr. Steel on the program and for his own bullish call on Wachovia's stock. "I screwed up," he said, referring at one point to Mr. Steel as a friend for 25 years. "I believed in the guy. Did he take advantage of me? Perhaps yes."

A spokeswoman for Mr. Steel defended his appearance, saying, "The environment we were operating in dramatically changed" between then and now. She added, "If you look at his comments, he tempered them by saying 'We always do what's right for shareholders.' "In fairness, she's right about that. Mr. Steel said on the same program that, "We're a public company. So we're going to do what's right for shareholders, I can promise you that." And at times, he seemed to show some self-restraint, resisting talking directly about Wachovia, instead spending much of the program talking in generalities about the troubles in the market.

WATCH: Cramer And Steel Talk About Financial Crises
Read more: Cnbc, Jim Cramer Bob Steel, Jim Cramer Wachovia, Mad Money, Bob Steel, Wachovia, Jim Cramer, Business News

Maria Bartiromo, Erin Burnett: "There Is Not A Rivalry," "It's A Male Fantasy Thing"

2008-09-29T11:29:31Z
As for their rivalry ... The rumors, both women say, have been a little creepy. "There was a point," says Burnett, "when they were running this stuff semi-regularly, and Maria and I, one of us would pick up the phone and call the other and just be like, 'Hey, that's really nasty.' You can't deny that makes you feel awkward. Both people are like, 'Oh my God, oh my God'--you know it's not true, but you don't know where it's coming from." To be sure, there has been competition between them. "If there weren't, people would say we weren't working hard enough," says Bartiromo. It was Erin, she says, who first called attention to the importance of covering the Middle East and India, during trips to Dubai, and then Mumbai. In April, Bartiromo went on her own tour, to Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Qatar, where she interviewed Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the prime minister and head of the country's $60 billion sovereign-wealth fund. There have been some major interview "gets"--including Christopher Ailman, the chief investment officer of the $160 billion California State Teachers' Retirement System--who say that they have gone on Erin's shows, only to be told that if they want to be interviewed by Maria on Closing Bell they could not appear on any competing shows. "Exclusivity is important to Maria," says Ailman, who says he now "only does Maria when I go on TV. She's No. 1."

"There is not a rivalry," insists Bartiromo. "Erin and I are friends." For Bartiromo the competition goes well beyond Burnett, and the pressure to stay one step ahead never lets up. "I'm always worrying," she says. "I mean, if I'm not worried about something, I worry." Last year she trademarked the name "Money Honey," and set up a company by that name to produce animated shows to teach children about money--although the company's name may change because she got "a lot of pushback" from people who thought "it was too sexy for children." She has a book to finish, on success, which is due in 2009, along with her BusinessWeek column and her television work. And, as she puts it, battles to fight. She says she is constantly struggling with her producers to get more airtime on her interviews, and her dream is to host a show with a format closer to that of Charlie Rose, which will no doubt be a demand she makes on CNBC--or anyone who outbids the network--as she negotiates her new contract. And she wants to maintain her hammerlock on the big interviews. If all those things are in place, says Dylan Ratigan, her co-anchor on Closing Bell, Maria isn't much interested in having Erin, or anyone else, as a rival. "As long as Maria is in a place where she feels comfortable, when she is doing what she wants to do, she doesn't much care what anyone else does. She's fine."

As for Erin, there may be a bit of a struggle getting out of Maria's enormous shadow. "No one wants to be compared," she says. "I have a great deal of admiration for Maria, but you don't want to be known as someone's '2.0.' Maria is amazing, but I want to be Erin 1.0."

Both of them, though, think the idea of a rivalry between them is particularly absurd, considering the on-air bitchfest among their male colleagues. Viewers at CNBC are regularly treated to screaming matches. Charlie Gasparino dressing down fellow correspondent Dennis Kneale during the Eliot Spitzer scandal: "You're not Client No. 1, right?" Kneale, voice shaking, shouts back: "I'd like an on-air apology. Show some class." Viewers have yet to see Maria and Erin hack at each other like that. "Oh my God, that is so true," says Maria, bursting into laughter.

There are some who believe that the rumors of a feud between Bartiromo and Burnett were started either by a disgruntled former CNBC employee or someone at Fox Business Network, or perhaps someone who falls into both categories, mainly because so many items about their rivalry have appeared in the New York Post, which, like FBN, is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Bartiromo and Burnett, however, have their own suspicions about who may have started the rumors. "Erin and I have spoken about this," says Bartiromo, "and I just think that we both feel like, well, maybe at the end of the day someone is doing this, planting this, because it puts more attention on the network." Asked if she means executives at CNBC, she smiles and says nothing. CNBC roundly denies this, but it sort of makes sense. After all, a fight between two smart, successful, beautiful women does not make for a bad marketing tactic in a business that still caters largely to men. "I think that when people see strong, successful women, they love to imagine that there is a rivalry," says Burnett. "Maybe it's because there are not as many women. And maybe, I don't know," she says, rolling her eyes, "it's a male-fantasy thing."
Read more: Cnbc, Erin Burnett, Maria Bartiromo, Erin Burnett Maria Bartiromo, CNBC Money Honeys, Media News

Americans Turn To CNBC To Explain Financial Crisis

2008-09-29T08:02:31Z
The week of Sept. 14 was the highest-rated one in CNBC's 19-year history, with 502,000 viewers during the business day (counted as the 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. hours by CNBC). Last week the ratings remained high, with an average 441,000 viewers through Thursday.

Mark Hoffman, the president of CNBC, said the network had focused for years on "the delicate balance in business between fear and greed.

"When there's an aggressive move to one extreme or the other CNBC engagement surges," he said. "Through much of this crisis fear has beat greed silly."

As Tom Brakke, an investment firm consultant, put it in a blog post last week, the viewer impulse was perhaps "the same basic instinct that attracts onlookers to a car crash."

The ratings have also soared for the Fox News Channel, CNN and MSNBC in recent weeks. (Presumably they have also increased for the business channels Fox Business Network and Bloomberg, but their ratings are not publicly reported by Nielsen.

Business pundits are suddenly in demand: CNBC reporters have contributed daily to the "NBC Nightly News," and Fox Business Network hosts have appeared on "20/20" and "The View."
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