Overview
Kudlow & Cramer was a CNBC American business and politics television program with conservative Lawrence Kudlow and liberal Jim Cramer. The program initially replaced Hardball with Chris Matthews, which moved to sister channel MSNBC, for the 8 p.m. Eastern Time slot, but later moved to the 5 p.m. slot. The show replaced the short-lived CNBC show America Now, which began with a rotating set of hosts and ended with Kudlow and Cramer as the two co-hosts. CNBC then created a show specifically for the two; the ordering of the name was picked via a coin toss at the end of the last America Now episode. Kudlow & Cramer had high TV ratings in comparison to other CNBC shows, after CNBC's TV ratings went down because of the negativity of the dot-com bubble burst and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. The program last aired on February 11, 2005, before it was split into Kudlow & Company, which first aired February 14, and Mad Money, which replaced Dylan Ratigan's Bullseye on March 14 of the same year.