The big story last night on late night television was the absolutely amazing pummeling of Jim Cramer on “The Daily Show.” The ratings have been through the roof this week, and Comedy Central just sent out a press release discussing these amazing numbers.
From the Comedy Central press department:
“THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART” RATINGS ALERT:
- Last night’s episode (Thursday, March 12, 2009) of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” featuring guest Jim Cramer from CNBC, drew 2.3 million total viewers, making it the second most-watched episode of the year and one of the top 10 most-watched episodes in show’s history.
- Only the Inauguration Day episode from Tuesday, January 20, 2009 drew more viewers this year with 2.6 million total viewers.
- The strength of these episodes propelled “The Daily Show” to record heights for the second time this year, alongside Inauguration Week. These were the most-watched weeks of the year and two of the top 10 weeks in the show’s history.
- The series drew an average 2.1 million total viewers for the week of March 9th overall.
Source: Nielsen Media Research (3/12/09) Live + Same Day data
DIGITAL:
- On Friday, March 13, TheDailyShow.com posted its highest traffic day in 2009.
- TheDailyShow.com attracted the largest audience and also streamed the most videos in a single day in 2009.
If you missed the original show, or would like to see even more of the bloodbath Jon served Jim, watch these videos!
Oh how I am loving this, let me count the ways…
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I enjoyed this video (just finished it) but I think I missed the serious take down part. I thought Cramer had many appropriate responses and managed to maintain his sense of humor throughout. it was a very interesting interview, and I feel like I learned a lot about financial issues. I kept expecting things to get worse, though, and they never did. it was civil, it was thorough, but it wasn’t brutal.
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I disagree in that I thought the “roll the clip” part of the video constituted a convincing takedown. I think it could have been a little more civil. I think it was brutal in the sense that Jon had less finesse than he did in the Doug Feith (uncut) takedown interview. There was a certain visceral, raw indignance to it that was amazing to watch but also not as calm and collected as Jon usually is.
And the revelation at the end about Jon’s mother kind of shows you why it was like that. The personal element I think made it certainly more raw than I think the interview could have been.
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you are right that the clips were pretty serious. I think I was a bit bothered by not knowing the context of that interview. why was there a recording of Cramer saying something he didn’t want on television? it did a lot do discredit Cramer’s claim that he was just lied to, and he was just a helpless victim of it.
Jon never seemed that angry to me. I miss people’s emotions on a pretty regular basis, though, so I’m not surprised. my main impression was that he seemed articulate, informed, and intelligent. I know he’s not an expert, and he’s on comedy central, but as a representative for the layperson he did a fantastic job.
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In addition to his mom’s 401K, Jon has another family tie to “Brawl Street” in his brother, Larry Leibowitz. (per the Wall St. Journal: http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2009/03/12/jon-stewarts-wall-street-corner-man-for-tonights-cramer-battle/) Larry even testified to the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee On Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises in 2004 (about the Trade Through Rule and Market Data). Yeah, I gave Google News a workout yesterday, why do you ask?
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I think that the edited version aired on TV was quite unfair to Cramer, and has caused me to lose a bit of respect for the show, but perhaps I was a little too doe-eyed to begin with. I’m normally a fierce supporter of Jon, and have always thought him to be a brilliant man who really cared. Something about this whole stunt seems wrong to me. I second the comment above regarding the clips of Cramer, and feel disturbed by being unaware of their context, I think I’ll have quite a question for Jon when I go to the show on Wednesday.
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And being the grammar nazi that I am, I have to add that I ran out of time in editing the above comment, so please excuse its crummy sentence structure.
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I understand how you feel to a certain extent. I’ve realized that my sometimes blind love for Jon and Stephen needs to be checked. I never want to be a blind follower of anyone.
I think Jon may have been somewhat brutal in the constant rolling of clips of Cramer since Cramer was only part of a larger situation.
However, Jon didn’t exactly go after Cramer. Last week Jon berated CNBC in general, but then Cramer seemed to take it personally and began reactly to Jon Stewart’s comments on other shows. In other words, I’m afraid Cramer was feeding the beast and was sort of asking for it.
As someone noted later in this post, Jon may have made it personal here since he mentioned his mother being affected by it near the end of the interivew. Furthermore, I believe one of his brothers may work on Wall Street.
Nevertheless, I don’t think Jon’s words were brutal as much as the tapes. I think he maintained his cool fairly well.
However, I didn’t want you to you to feel like you were the lone “I disagree with Jon” poster here:)
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Oh, I’m glad there is a TDS post today! I just noticed on The Late Night TV Page, that BRUCE
SPRINGSTEEN is going to be the guest on The Daily Show next Thursday!!!! MY BIRTHDAY!
AND I’M NOT THERE! DANG!!!! Between my fan-girling and Jon’s fan-boying, I don’t think I will be able to handle it!
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Happy berfday in advance! And that’s awesome news about Springsteen. Can’t wait to see what songs he plays. When I went to a TDS taping (for my birthday), the last song to play for the audience before the show started was “Born to Run.” Joy overload.
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This was absolutely fantastic. I’ve said so much already in other places that I just can’t keep repeating myself, though. Haha. Suffice it to say, I respect Jon even more after this polite but cutthroat, well-researched take down of someone who was being disingenuous and deserved to be called out. I didn’t think I could respect him anymore than I did before!
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As someone pointed out in a previous post, this is totally reminiscent of Jon’s appearance on Crossfire. I love the fact that Jon is always connected to the everyday folks in this world and is able to channel the undercurrent of emotions about everything that’s been going on since our economy tanked. I appreciate that he used his celebrity to channel that emotion to “the powers that be”, which just happened to be Jim Cramer. I felt a little bad for Cramer though — he’s not *entirely* to blame for all this (although, he is a small part of a much larger problem), but he diplomatically took the heat anyways. So, props to Cramer for keeping his cool.
But Jon is definitely right. Something HAS to change about the way our financial system works in this country and how it’s status is portrayed to the general public. I’m sure we’d most appreciative if the mucky-mucks would stop lying to us on a nearly constant basis.
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The Cramer clips were taped and originally aired for a financial news website (which is why he said he’d never say it on TV). I remember when that came out a couple of years ago, many many people in the financial industry were horrified by his bald-faced admission and advocacy of illegal market manipulation. What’s worse, even though he publicly admitted to illegal maneuvers (“shennanigans”, as he’d call them), the SEC never even looked into it, thus in essence condoning the practices.
I watched both the edited and unedited clips, and I don’t see a substantial difference in tone between them. Jon was pushing hard to make a point about how business news networks were more focused on selling the market hype than actual journalism. And though Cramer was friendly throughout, he also never fully owned up to the problem.
So frankly, I don’t have an ounce of sympathy for the man. He’s a crook, was proud of it, and now is pretending like he’s always tried to be a good guy. Jon nailed it – Cramer knows this stuff is going on, he’s done it himself, and yet he’s complicit in perpetuating the hype.
I think the whole conversation was admirably civil, and though Jon pushed hard (for which I have endless admiration), he kept to the point. The only time I saw his anger peek through was when he said “I can’t tell you how angry that makes me. Because it says to me you all knew. You all knew.”
Honestly, as much as I love and admire both TCR and TDS, I sorely wish they had some company in this game. Imagine if the “real” news actually started doing their reporting jobs, and Jon really could go back to making fart noises and funny faces. But given that’s not happening, I am so thankful that TDS & TCR continue to be intelligent, entertaining, passionate voices of sanity.
</soapbox>
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You might enjoy this short blog post by Time Magazine’s “Tuned In” columnist as it relates what Jon said in the Cramer interview to journalism:
http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2009/03/13/stewartcramer-whos-this-song-about/
And here’s a funny picture, just for giggles:
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/03/societys-only-protection/
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While I enjoy watching Cramer every night, one must remember the show is primarily entertainment. The financial networks exist to promote their advertisers financial and investment products. Who would expect them to warn about the credit bubble or coming Washington national debt collapse which will destroy much of the remaining private wealth in America today or what this will do to the dollar, the stock market, bonds, gold or the real estate market?
China is now worried about their dangerous over investment in US Treasury obligations. Washington ’s long-term choice is either repudiation or monetization. For monetization to be effective, the depreciation in the dollar would have to be substantial and this in turn would dramatically raise prices of imports for American consumers which would mean a tremendous drop in foreign imports. Debt monetization would cause more disruption to exporting nations than selective repudiation of Treasury debt.
The Campaign to Cancel the Washington National Debt By 12/22/2013 Constitutional Amendment is starting now in the U.S. See: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=67594690498&ref=ts
Thanks,
Ron with 30 plus years in the investment business and banking industry.
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Ron, I think you make a good point, and I think it’s the heart of Jon’s argument against CNBC (and the media more generally).
It’s the fundamental mismatch between how they portray themselves and their actual agenda. The financial networks play up the journalistic side in all their ads – they’re giving you critical information and advice, etc. Yet as you say, the reality is they are beholden to their advertisers, and thus they don’t report anything contrary to their advertisers’ interests.
It’s either entertainment or it’s journalism, you have to choose. CNBC and others want to have it both ways. They want the reputation and ratings that come from being perceived as a bona fide financial news source, but without the journalistic obligations for quality reporting that should come with it.
I hope at the very least that the conversation about the obligations of so-called “news” networks continues, and we might actually start getting more real information and investigative reporting, and a bit less gimmick & hype. Even small improvements would be a start.
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I really respect Jon. I agree with what he’s doing. Sometimes I just miss the older TDS (when it wasn’t so mainstream). I love that Jon and TDS are calling people on their BS, but I do miss the interviews that were conducted for entertainment instead of used for making a point.
I also wonder why this is getting so much attention (it was reported in the Charlotte Observer, so it has to be big *grumbles about local newspaper*) and Stephen’s WHCD got the blogoshpere in a tizzy but not the mainstream media. This interview was even on Best Week Ever. I feel like the WHCD was a bigger deal than this and it makes me angry that the media would promote the Cramer thing but allow the attack on Bush to fall through the cracks.
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Well, look who joined the party (a bit late, but he just had to show up): Tucker Carlson just called Jon Stewart a partisan hack.
http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/pot-meet-kettle-tucker-carlson-accuse
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