Here's some media news for CNBC watchers: The New York Post reports:

CNBC's low-rated 10 p.m. show -- hosted by Carmen Wong Ulrich, the personal-finance expert and author of "Generation Debt" -- is said to be a victim of the success of documentaries like "Pleasure: Business of Porn" and "The Age of Wal-Mart." A spokesman for CNBC told Page Six, "Due to the tremendous success of our documentary program, we've made the tough decision to move resources to our long-form [docu-making] unit."

Right: It's being pulled from the air because CNBC thinks it can get better ratings with other shows. Isn't that always the reason shows get canceled?

Will financial reporting ever have a Woodward and Bernstein, the two metro desk Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate Scandal? After attending last night's panel on Financial Journalism Under Fire: Did We Do Our Job?, hosted by the New York Financial Writers Association, the answer is clear: no. (Changes may and should happen, and I'll touch on a few of those).

I have a theory that if you took a psychological assessment of a sports writer, a political reporter, and a financial writer to see who was the most cynical, the answer would most definitely be the financial writer. They're reporting on an industry ruled by greed and people who make more money in a year than they'll see in a lifetime. The system is just too large, too shady, and too encouraged to be bad in the name of profits (deregulated) that reporting on any of this would be best reserved for some hippie outlet like Mother Jones, not the respectable Wall Street Journal. Big scoops in finance usually involve mergers and acquisitions, company and exec failures -- going after anything else is cute idealism. (In fact, someone last night compared it to steroids and baseball -- you don't want to know where those home runs are coming from, you just want to enjoy the game).

Jon Stewart has devoted a considerable amount of airtime to bashing CNBC and its pundits for not doing more to warn the public about the stupidity and incompetence that led to disasters for retirement portfolios.

Now NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker is firing back, calling Stewart's attacks "incredibly unfair" and "completely out of line." He said that "everyone wants to find a scapegoat" and believes that blaming the financial media for the meltdown is "absurd."

Rick Santelli's passionate rant against Obama's stimulus plan attracted millions of YouTube views and a rebuke from the White House press secretary. Overnight, Santelli was transformed from an obscure commodities commentator into an icon.

Playboy claimed that there was more to the apotheosis of Santelli than met the eye. The URL to the Playboy commentary no longer works but it's reprinted here. Mark Ames and Yasha Levine claim that "As veteran Russia reporters, both of us spent years watching the Kremlin use fake grassroots movements to influence and control the political landscape. To us, the uncanny speed and direction the movement took and the players involved in promoting it had a strangely forced quality to it. If it seemed scripted, that's because it was."

In a discussion with Rick Santelli on Fast Money, CNBC's Dylan Ratigan argued that one of the major factors stifling a restoration of market confidence has been the failure to crack down on the bad actors -- the charlatans, crooks, and incompetents who drove corporate America into this ditch.

Ratigan makes a pretty bold comparison: He argues that the people who are saying that we need to "move forward" with a recovery are like people who said that we should "move on" after September 11, and not bother with going after Osama Bin Laden.

Rick Santelli's impassioned diatribe against Obama's plan to help struggling homeowners sparked a prickly and sarcastic response from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

Santelli fired back in a CNBC interview with Larry Kudlow (see below). In a statement on the CNBC website, Santelli wrote that "The issues that currently face us and the solutions to correct them need to be debated, vetted, and openly studied. This should not be an issue about the political left or right."

Kudlow, a die-hard right-winger, is trying to make this little cat fight between Santelli and Gibbs into a free speech/government bullying critics issue. I don't buy that. In any case, this makes for great theater, and it's good to see people debating important economic issues.

Back in August of 2007, Barron's Bill Alpert slammed Jim Cramer's stock-picking abilities in a cover story (subscription required). At the time, Alpert reported that "Over the past two years, viewers holding Cramer's stocks would be up 12% while the Dow rose 22% and the S&P 500 16%, according to a record of 1,300 of the CNBC star's Buy recommendations compiled by YourMoneyWatch.com, a Website run by a retired stock analyst and loyal Cramer-watcher."

Now Alpert is back for more. In the latest issue of Barron's, he writes (subscription required) that "Cramer's recommendations underperform the market by most measures. From May to December of last year, for example, the market lost about 30%. Heeding Cramer's Buys and Sells would have added another five percentage points to that loss, according to our latest tally."

There have been numerous stories about the plight of the newly unemployed former Wall Street hotshot and it really is quite sad. Hard-working paper pushers have gone from seven-figure bonuses to the unemployment office. and in particularly dire cases, they've had to transfer kids to less elite private schools or perhaps even sell an Aspen ski lodge.

All of this could make for a fascinating CNBC reality show styled after hits like The Surreal Life and The Simple Life. Call it The Severed Life. The show would feature recently laid-off high level corporate executives, including former CEOs who left with massive severance packages, there to serve as punching bags: Richard Fuld, Angelo Mozilo, and Ken Lewis -- Oh wait, he somehow still has a job. Lesser-known cast members might include investment bankers and hedge fund managers.

CNBC's Jim Cramer has an audience of 600,000 for his Mad Money. But Barron's has gone to great lengths to investigate how his stock picks have performed and it has concluded that they lag the market averages by about five percentage points. Specifically, Barron's concluded that from May to December of 2008, the S&P 500 lost about 30% and "heeding Cramer's Buys and Sells would have added another five percentage points to that loss."

Cramer's Sells do better than his Buys. Specifically, his Sells outperformed the market on the downside by five percentage points while his Buys lost up to 10 percentage points more than the market. One finance professor estimated using options-market activity that betting against Cramer's Buy recommendations can yield 25% in a month.

Ivanka Trump -- the "executive vice president of development and acquisitions" of her daddy's company -- appeared on CNBC on Friday to talk about New York City real estate and The Trump Organization's plans. Referring to the tough financing situation, she said that "We're waiting for that to open up and then we'll be ready to pounce," she said. "We are very well positioned to take advantage of great opportunities."

She also said that the company had been conservative in its financing over the past few years -- which doesn't exactly explain why Deutsche Bank is suing her father over issues relating to a loan on a building in Chicago. Meanwhile Trump Entertainment Resorts (NASDAQ: TRMP) is missing interest payments and staring down bankruptcy. Oh, by the way, Ms. Trump is on that company's board of directors, but there was no mention of the fact that as she spoke the company's stock was trading at about 26 cents per share. When she joined the stock was trading at more than 20 times that price.

Like her father, Ms. Trump is full of optimism about The Trump Organization and how much better positioned it is than similar companies, no matter how bad the headlines seem to be.

That's her schtick: But it's disappointing that CNBC's anchors didn't hold her feet to the fire a little more.

Former Disney (NYSE: DIS) chief Michael Eisner has canceled his Conversations with Michael Eisner show on CNBC to devote more time to his business ventures. Through his investment fund Tornante, Eisner has stakes in baseball card icon Topps, along with other start-up type ventures.

The ever prideful Eisner made it clear that he was canceling the show of his volition, but the statistics suggest that he wouldn't have lasted much longer. The show was averaging just 100,000 viewers per episode.

I don't think anyone will miss this one too much. My favorite episode -- for comedic reasons -- was the one where he interviewed former Home Depot (NYSE: HD) CEO Robert Nardelli and the two commiserated about how mean shareholders are to executives and how just because a stock does nothing for years while you're CEO, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't get a nine-figure severance package.

This one looks like a case of Mr. Eisner resigning to avoid being impeached -- just like he did at Disney.

Is Jim Cramer the "Grinch who stole Christmas?" That's what his rivals at Fox Business Network want the world to think.

According to Talking Biz News, the News Corp.-owned cable channel's holiday card features the head of the bombastic host of CNBC's "Mad Money" and chairman of my former employer TheStreet.com Inc. (NASDAQ: TSCM) on the body of the Dr. Seuss character. Cramer, also a blogger here, is dyed green for good measure.

There is even a bit of verse that begins: "You're a mean one, Mr. Cramer; You rant and rave every day; You told us all that Bear was fine, there's nothing more to say." The poem goes on from there. You can read the whole thing here.

Video Professor has been running commercials during the trading day on CNBC: I saw one at 9:44 a.m. EDT. The ads offer a program called How to Buy and Sell on eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY).

I'm told that these commercials have been on the air for awhile but they seem especially well-placed and relevant now. A year ago, the average viewer on CNBC (according to CNBC) was worth $2.7 million. Now that number is probably closer to 27 cents and hawking castoffs on eBay probably has a whole new appeal. Perhaps former Lehman Bros. traders are looking for tips on how to sell their vintage Lehman logo caps to pay their mortgage. Or maybe they're looking to unload a Bear Stearns cafeteria card to pay for a couple burritos.

I'm exaggerating a little bit but it does seem noteworthy that a company offering tips on how to sell on eBay is now advertising on a network that targets extremely high net worth individuals.

Does anyone want an Enron bath towel?