Rukeyser Pioneered TV Stock Talk, and Cramer Added the Laugh Track

The young men who watch Cramer's daily "Mad Money" on CNBC seem to have slammed a couple of shooters, chased with a calming infusion of Budweiser, before calling in and shouting "Booyah!" -- Cramer's not-so-secret password for getting to ask a question on the air.

"Things have changed," Cramer said. "Today the average guy owns stocks. When Lou hit the air, only the rich owned stocks. And the moderately rich. Today there's a tremendous cohort of people who own stocks and are not all that sophisticated about it.

"You've got to get those people, too," he said. "You've got to go beyond punditry and draw people in who were never drawn in."

Rukeyser was a long-term bull who showed his distain for bearish predictions by disinviting guests he deemed too negative. Cramer shares that viewpoint, although he expresses it by decapitating teddy bears.

Rukeyser was a buy-and-hold kind of guy, but so was most everyone in those days. Now that most people can trade at home over the Internet, Cramer caters not to the 401(k) crowd but to people who think their nest eggs are secure and have a little "mad money" left over to play the market.

Both built respectable track records.

The fan Web site YourMoneyWatch.com calculates that since "Mad Money" went on the air last summer, Cramer's stock picks are up about 13.5 percent, while the Dow is up about 8.1 percent and the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500-stock index is up about 6.6 percent.

Another Web site, CramerWatch.org, scores it differently, pitting Cramer against a mythical monkey named Leonard who flips a coin to decide whether to buy or sell stocks mentioned on the show. "At CramerWatch.org we show how you would be better picking 'buy' or 'sell' at random, which is pretty much how our monkey, Leonard, picks stocks. And Leonard is right more often then Jim. With a lot less noise."

The monkey, however, evaluates only stocks mentioned on the "Lightning Round," a one-man quiz show in which Cramer evaluates stocks requested by callers.

There were no bloggers following Rukeyser when he was on the air, so "Wall Street Week" was not subject to instant analysis. But two academics who looked at the show's picks over a two-year period in the 1990s compared stocks mentioned on "Wall Street Week" with companies considered their peers, based on the size and nature of their businesses.

"Wall Street Week" stocks outperformed their designated peers by 15 to 17 percent, the professors said. "The show had information value and not just entertainment value," they concluded.

Others also documented the Rukeyser Effect.