• Remember back when News Corp.'s Roger Ailes promised that Fox Business would crush CNBC? It turns out the upstart network is attracting 8,000 viewers during daytime hours, compared to CNBC's average of 250,000 or more. [NYO]

If you can stand it, it's worth watching a particular excerpt from CNBC's interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg twice. First watch the version CNBC put on the air, embedded above. In that clip, Zuckerberg answers a question sounding sure of himself, speaking in clear, declarative sentences, and smoothly using his talking points, not just rattling them off. Compare it to the clip below of Zuckerberg answering the same question in an unedited version of the interview CNBC reporter Julia Boorstin embedded on her blog. The difference shows CNBC editors' talents — and just how far Zuckerberg has to go before it's safe to put a microphone near him. It all goes downhill after Zuckerberg begins to answer a straightforward softball from Boorstin — "What is the new site design and what does it mean for the user experience?" — by saying, "So for those of you who don't know, I, we just announced, um and launched, started rolling a new site design."

CNBC headed out to the Hamptons a couple of weeks ago to meet up with Howard Stern and soon-to-be wife Beth Ostrosky at a Hamptons magazine party celebrating—what else?—Beth Ostrosky on the cover of the mag. As the reporters from CNBC tell it, Howard and Beth are the Hamptons hot "It" couple and they've had an absolutely storybook romance (although, as you'll see, the account of their romantic first meeting leaves out the fact that Howard was very much married at the time). Now they spend time on the East End because, says Beth, her "favorite part of being in the Hamptons is the wildlife." (And by animals, she means the sort that run around on four legs, not the sort that line up outside Dune in Southampton on a Saturday night). Howard and Beth's passion for themselves—and cute animals—below.

Call it a strange attraction: Women whose Wikipedia entries aren't to their liking just can't seem to resist taking their case to the site's stubbly cofounder, Jimmy Wales. Even CNBC's Becky Quick struck up a correspondence, she admits in this clip. Unlike Canadian television commentator Rachel Marsden, whose call for help turned into a sexual fling, Quick is married. To a computer programmer. (I can hear you all eating your hearts out.) Why didn't she just ask her husband for help getting her entry edited? Given Wales's reputation, that seems easier.

Watch Jimmy Wales's face as he's introduced in a segment for this morning's episode of Squawk Box on CNBC. Wales has long claimed to be Wikipedia's sole founder — a fact disputed by Larry Sanger, Wikipedia's cofounder. As CNBC's Joe Kernen matter-of-factly describes Wales as the site's cofounder, Wales furrows his brows, starts to open his mouth, darts his eyes back and forth, and then swallows his pride. You can just see him writing a blog post about it in his head.

One of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales's most charming personality traits is his relentless starfucking. It's a tendency that's exacerbated by his role as spiritual leader of the world's most comprehensive collection of inconsequentially inaccurate details about famous peoples' lives. On CNBC's Squawk Box this morning, note Wales's body language — the shoulder roll, the falsely modest talking-into-his-coffee-cup maneuver — as he chats up New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin, making sure to remind viewers that he's totally BFF with Virgin founder Richard Branson.

CNBC's rumor-mongering on March 10 about Bear Stearns' liquidity crisis may have ultimate brought down the investment firm. Or so writes Bryan Burrough in the August issue of Vanity Fair, adding that the day was as bad for the integrity of financial journalism as it was for Eliot Spitzer and people with mortgages: "Publicly speculating on a firm's liquidity is akin to shouting 'Fire!!!' in a crowded theater; in catastrophic cases it can trigger panic selling. It risks, in other words, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy."

WHICH morning CNBC reporter keeps a jar of mayonnaise under his desk? He eats it straight, with a spoon.

CNBC's Maria Bartiromo: "Sell anything, like a home or stocks, and make a profit... 30 percent of the profit will go to the government instead of 15." [Post]

Billionaire and activist investor Carl Icahn took his Yahoo obsession to the airwaves with a phone-in interview on CNBC's Fast Money yesterday afternoon. In my attempts to distill the over twelve-minute, rambling dialogue with the anchors on the show, the most interesting thing was how guarded and halting Icahn was about his intentions — he revealed little that he, or one of his assistants, hasn't brought up in his many open letters and other lobbying to unseat CEO Jerry Yang, or answer the question "If you succeed in your proxy battle, who says Microsoft will buy?" So with no money quotes to go with, I threw in everything else.

Donny Deutsch: chairman of the huge ad agency Deutsch Inc., host of the rarely-viewed show The Big Idea on CNBC, permanently hyper talker. The press has always had a love/ hate relationship with the man. He's a dynamic, quotable guy, which is why he gets an inordinate amount of coverage in the first place. But then again, he's a confirmed insufferable egomaniac. Some people love his style; but we've found that people driven by a burning need to hear others talking about them are almost invariably well qualified for the Douchebag Award. As is Deutsch. Five good reasons why:

Why is Jim Cramer, CNBC's millionaire Mad Money maniac, such a shouty little bag of nuts? "That chip on his shoulder may have been to do with a turbulent early career. He worked as a newspaper reporter in Florida and California before suffering a series of catastrophic mishaps in which his home was burgled and his bank account was emptied. In his autobiography, Cramer recounts being homeless for nine months and sleeping in a car in California with a gun for protection." [The Guardian via MediaBistro]

Jim Cramer just hates unfair pay packages for corporate bigwigs who get it wrong: a recent decision to overlook mortgage losses and preserve executive bonuses won the board of Washington Mutual a place on the CNBC anchor's Wall of Shame. But Cramer's own compensation bears no relation to his track record as a financial analyst.

Word on "The Street" is that CNBC Reporter Michelle Caruso-Cabrera may be dating Gary Parr, deputy chairman of Lazard and a guy who is involved in finance stories Caruso-Cabrera could be covering [Radar]. It's reminiscent of CNBC Money Honey Maria Bartiromo's purported canoodling with Citigroup exec Todd Thompson. This raises an important issue: why do all the rich business guys go for the CNBC women? Haven't they heard of a little place called FOX BUSINESS NETWORK, which put in a lot of effort to hire its own stable of attractive female on-air personalities to lure male viewers? Can they get some love over there? We've decided to help them out; after the jump, five of Fox's foxy professional women, and a real item of interest about each one. Act now, Wall Street jerks!

Did you know that Perez Hilton is "the gay Latino Oprah?" Or that he totally launched the singer Amy Winehouse? It's true because it's on television! Financial news network CNBC has discovered Perez and decided he is an increasingly important part of the dysfunctional American economy, so we all continue to be doomed. After the jump, gay Latino Oprah explains his appeal in a report that will be seen by powerful businessmen everywhere and probably trigger the next financial panic.

We love the fact that Michael Eisner, the former Disney CEO and once one of the most feared men in the media business, was reduced to staking his claim for media influence with only his shitty little chat show on CNBC. It's almost as satisfying as when former New Yorker editor and dressed up gossip hound Tina Brown had to stake her claim for influence with a shitty little chat show on CNBC. Fantastic schadenfreude for the unsuccessful masses. In Eisner's latest hard-hitting, needle-moving interview, he tracks down designer Vera Wang and gets the scoop on her Olympic ice skating dreams, and her thoughts on wedding dresses. Hey Mike, work like this is why they RE-broadcast you at midnight!

"Mad Money" host and bug-eyed madman Jim Cramer went on CNBC today to clarify his statements from last week about Bear Stearns, when he urged people not to move their money out of the firm. As we pointed out earlier in his defense, he was not referring to the company's stock, and his advice was actually perfectly sound. "Do you know what would happen on this show if I came out and said I want everyone to take their money out of X bank?" he ranted today. "Jim Cramer causes a run on X bank!" As it turns out, the run on the bank happened anyways. This video, originally posted on YouTube, features Cramer's defense today along with some, ahem, editorial comments against him; we have to say we still agree with him in this particular case. Although we would never take his stock tips. Click to watch the clip.

"Bear Stearns is not in trouble!" Jim Cramer, CNBC's bug-eyed "Mad Money" host who is to finance what Carrot Top is to comedy, shouted last Tuesday. "Don't move your money from Bear! That's just being silly." The immediate reaction to seeing his advice in the wake of Bear's collapse is: what an idiot. But really, his advice was not bad! Cramer—a famously bad prognosticator—noted that Bear would, at worst, be taken over, meaning those who had money with the firm would have their investments guaranteed by a more deep-pocketed buyer. Which is exactly what happened when JPMorgan bought Bear over the weekend. Note that he was not speaking about Bear's stock price [last Tuesday: over $60. Now: toilet paper]. What have we learned? Only Wild Jim Cramer can stop the collapse of the American economy. Click to watch the crazy savant's ill-fated harangue. [via WJNO]

Venture capitalist Paul Kedrosky went on CNBC's Squawk Box this morning to talk about "tech cyclicality," but ended up talking about NAND flash and listening to Jim Goldman and Joe Kernen talk about Apple and Google's up-and-down stock prices. The bit about flash was boring, but the stock talk was amusing. Have a look — buy, sell or hold?

Financial news network CNBC is in a tiff with the financial magazine Barron's, according to a ponderous but awesome story by the Columbia Journalism Review's Dean Starkman. Barron's decided to investigate CNBC meal ticket Jim Cramer, host of "Mad Money," and the network got pissed. The Barron's story began as a look into whether Cramer's stock picks might be leaking before broadcast somehow, which scared CNBC so much that it scurried around spending money on lawyers and sweating until that line of investigation was dropped. The final version of the piece didn't mention that, but it did say that Cramer's stock picks don't generally beat the overall market—not a stunning conclusion to financial types, but poison to Cramer's viewing audience, who watch him with hopes of getting rich. Now the TV network is so mad that it has mostly stopped inviting Barron's reporters onto shows. Starkman comes to the conclusion that both sides made some mistakes, but CNBC is almost totally wrong, while the Barron's story is mostly correct. So why the snippy move to ban the (innocent) reporters from the air? That's the most shine anybody at Barron's can hope for in their day-to-day life. End the embargo! [CJR] Remember: if you upset Jim Cramer, he goes PSYCHO like THIS: