Advisers got the joke about CNBC years ago

“The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart has brought to wide public attention — in his signature snarky style — what advisers have been saying for years: much of the content on CNBC is super-hyped, useless pap. Actually, the content is worse than useless. As Stewart cleverly and devastatingly pointed out in a recent segment, CNBC commentators and their “insights” can be positively ruinous to one’s financial health. That’s a point that advisers have been making for years. But advisers have been limited to words. Stewart deftly uses the medium of television to skewer the CNBC bloviators at their own game. By simply replaying a few of Maria Bartiromo’s fawning questions to disgraced CEOs or Jim Cramer’s bellowing, self-assured pronouncements — which, if followed, would have steered an investor right off a financial cliff — viewers see the idiocy for what it is. By the way, the next installment of Stewart’s ribbing of CNBC takes place on “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central tomorrow night, when Jim Cramer makes an appearance in person. If I were the czar of TV regulation, CNBC would be forced to run the following disclaimer on all its programming: “THIS PROGRAM IS ENTERTAINMENT AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS FINANCIAL ADVICE. ITS CONTENT IS DANGEROUS FOR PREGNANT WOMEN, WOMEN WHO MAY BECOME PREGNANT AND ALL THOSE WHOSE MOTHERS WERE ONCE PREGNANT. IF A DESIRE TO CHECK STOCK PRICES MORE THAN ONCE EVERY FOUR HOURS PERSISTS, CONSULT A PROFESSIONAL ADVISER.” The genius of CNBC, Fox Business and other financial programming is that the content attracts an affluent market and is relatively cheap to produce. Think about it, the CNBC day is mostly talking heads, visiting guests who are paid nothing and screaming Cramer at dinnertime. Even soap operas cost more to write and put on the air. Why does the audience watch? Much of the allure, I believe, comes from the nature of television itself. TV is more real than reality. There’s a drugged quality to the feeling we get as we stare at the moving pictures and are drawn into the TV world of clear beginnings, middles and ends. Who cares if it’s real or worthwhile, it’s exciting! In print, financial news can be dull to those who have not developed a taste for the subject. On TV, by contrast, financial news is like sports — it’s up, it’s down, there’s graphics, winners, losers. There’s also good hair, gleaming white teeth and sex. Come on. Floyd Norris, the esteemed financial columnist of the New York Times, is brilliant and knowledgeable and much more insightful in print than Maria Bartiromo is on cable, but Floyd has as much TV wow as Ben Stein. We all want to watch Maria. But let’s remember that the TV Maria has more in common with the lovely Vanna White (a shrewd investor off-camera, by the way) than she does with Floyd Norris.