Barry Ritholtz reports on a fascinating discussion with his publisher:
What really surprised me was their reactions to two of the quasi-news opinion programs — The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The Glen Beck Program.
After Oprah, these two are (apparently) amongst the biggest book sellers on TV. Like Oprah, Glenn Beck has a loyal audience, is perceived as very sincere — and moves books.
But the most intriguing “inside baseball” stuff we discussed was the impact of The Daily Show on book sales — in particular, two recent books that were the subject of big TDS segments. These were mentioned as prime examples of the power of Jon Stewart.
The first is House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street by William D. Cohan. After Stewart raved about the book (”Helluva book — you made finance read like a suspense novel”) when Cohan was on the show April 9th, sales of the book in stores tripled. They have been strong ever since.
The second example was the infamous James Cramer appearance on TDS on March12th. According to the people I had lunch with yesterday, the very next day, sales of Cramer’s book Jim Cramer’s Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World went into free fall. They absolutely plummeted — and they haven’t recovered since.
2 Comments
Interesting isn’t it that for a country whose popular culture is so widely derided by many of the intellectual elite in places such as the UK and Australia, that books and writing occupy such an important place in popular television programs such as the Daily Show and even, gasp, on Fox News! I’ve built up a very healthy list of ‘must reads’ thanks to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
I think its absolutely true that while the USA has the worst aspects of consumerism, celebrity culture etc; it also has an amazing intellectual life;