Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz and the brain trust at ThinkProgress probably won't like this, but CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer thinks the Glenn Beck boycott won't have an impact on NewsCorp's (NASDAQ:NWSA), the parent company of Fox News, bottom line.
During the "Stop Trading" segment on "Street Signs" Aug. 24, Cramer explained that Unilever (NYSE:UN) was going all out with its advertising, by not avoiding shows that might offend someone's political sensibilities. Cramer said that strategy was paying off for Unilever, whose stock is up 10 percent since July.
"When I look at it, it's very interesting because there's an article in the same magazine, Ad Age magazine, about how like Unilever is spending like mad, and that they're going to be, Unilever had a spectacular quarter," Cramer said. "My take is that whoever is just trying to parcel and figure out where to be in the Fox News or where to be in the MSNBC, ought to take their cue from Unilever, which had the best quarter of all packaged goods because they flooded all media and it showed that those who pulled back, whether it be from Glenn Beck, or whether it be from Olbermann, didn't do as well as Unilever, which was all in during this period where the rates went down."
Unlike his colleagues on sister network MSNBC, Cramer didn't portray Beck as a racist hatemonger and said that eventually all the advertisers forced away from his program would come back.
"So my take is that advertising worked, but it only worked if you're not - I mean look, I think, I used to follow Glenn Beck when I had a radio show," Cramer said. "He's a nice guy, Philadelphia and I've been on his show. You know - I think they all come back in the end."
The goal of the boycott, instigated by Color of Change, was to hurt Beck and Fox News' advertising revenue. However, according to Cramer the campaign was failing and NewsCorp was not struggling in any way from the boycott.
"You know, Fox News was the big driver in the NewsCorp quarter," Cramer explained. "And uh, it was spectacular. You can't say, ‘Well hold on, I don't like it, so therefore it wasn't spectacular.' It was amazing, but, and the fact is that article said they shifted money to other shows, which meant you shouldn't be selling NewsCorp on that."
