The madman behind CNBC's 'Mad Money'

< Prev | 1 | 2

FREE VIDEO

Savvy investing
Stock market guru and CNBC host Jim Cramer talks with the "Today" show's Natalie Morales about his new book "Real Money."

Today show

More from The Big Money

Google May Go Local With Yelp's Help

Word of the Week

What We Have Here Is a Failure To Communicate

Why Google-Yelp Makes Sense

Google Trying To Buy Yelp

(external links)

Ratings
Since debuting March 14, weeknights at 6 Eastern, "Mad Money" has averaged 167,000 viewers and pulled in an average of 178,000 viewers in June, which is the best that regular CNBC programming in that time slot has done since March 2003. The 9 p.m. broadcast — a rerun of what airs at 6 p.m. — is drawing 91,000 viewers, almost as many as Miller's average of 113,000. ("Mad Money" also airs a third time at midnight.)

"We're not really promoting it off our own air and it's grown essentially every week," said CNBC President Mark Hoffman. "We just put it out there and it's just growing virally."

Airing "Mad Money" at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern is part of the CNBC's strategy of offering business news from coast to coast until prime time, Hoffman said, and not necessarily an attempt to counter the other cable channels' strong personalities (Larry King on CNN, Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes on Fox News Channel) with one of its own at the same hour.

Story continues below ↓

advertisement | your ad here

'This is how he is'
"There's no contrivance here. We're not making him into anything," Hoffman said. "This is how he is. He has 5,000 stocks in his head. He's a brilliant guy who is kinetic when you're with him. Jim is focused on a couple of things: making the subject accessible, making it relevant and making it interesting."

Cramer himself has been interested in business since he was a boy growing up in Philadelphia. After graduating from Harvard, where he was editor of the Crimson newspaper, he ended up as a reporter for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, where he wrote about semiconductors in Silicon Valley.

After that, as a reporter helping start American Lawyer magazine, he was constantly checking the stock market.

"My boss at that point, Steve Brill, instead of berating me about it, gave me money to make," Cramer said. "Made some money, had a couple good hits. Then I put myself through (Harvard) Law School with it, and when I got out I said, `I don't think I'm going to be a lawyer.' I went to Goldman (Sachs)."

Discussing stocks and investment strategies on the TV show, he said, basically represents what he did all day at the hedge fund he founded — only without the wealthy clients badgering him about their money every afternoon.

"All day it was a day of narration where I would narrate what was happening to my colleagues, much to their own chagrin — though there were some guys who just loved it," he said. "I just love to talk about it. After the close, I would talk about it with people. Then I would go out for drinks and I would talk about it with people."

Even though "Mad Money" eats up a big chunk of his time and energy, Cramer also plans to continue doing his syndicated radio show, the columns for his Web site TheStreet.com and writing books, because this is what he believes he does best.

"The analogue is the sports guy — the sports guy who knows all the times that there were runners at second and third with two outs in the third inning in the fifth game of the World Series," he said. "That's me. That's me for this."

< Prev | 1 | 2