my hat is off to viacom for getting this incredible bargain.ever, i want to throw an odd job style hat at the buyers of this paper. i say they deserve a beheading. but that would imply these people have heads, something that has to be called into question given the high risk return of this 30-year high-risk piece of paper that ultimately might be junk. let's take a call. let's go to bob in mississippi. bob. >> caller: hey, jim. straight to the point. you speak of the importance of reinvesting dfrds. i own at&t, which pays me a really good dividend, but i also own one of your favorite mlps that pays me an even better dividend. should i reinvest in the company that pays the dividend or pick the stock that offers me the best value? >> at&t's owned by my charitable trust actionalertsplus.com. because it's a charitable trust i have to give the trust away, give that part of the trust away. but kmr, kinder morgan, the r kind is the reinvestment dividend kind and that's a real great piece of paper. the name's bunt. viacom bunt. but i think you can get

. >> checking media, viacom shares at a one-year high. we break down the charts. >> president obama has pitched a new plan to let millions of homeowners refinance their mortgages. but can that ever get through congress? housing and urban secretary shaun donovan weighs in on that. coming up at 4:30 p.m. eastern time. >> let's check the dow with the index up 110 points. there's a look at the major stocks leading that rally. back in a moment. until the end of the quarter to think about your money... ♪ that right now, you want to know where you are, and where you'd like to be. we know you'd like to see the same information your advisor does so you can get a deeper understanding of what's going on with your portfolio. we know all this because we asked you, and what we heard helped us create pnc wealth insight, a smarter way to work with your pnc advisor, so you can make better decisions and live achievement. let's -- let's start over from the beginning. we were just driving along, comin' back from the lake, and all of a sudden, ka-plam. it bli

coup . >> we got viacom to watch. back to david favor back at hq. >> we're keeping an eye on viacom this morning, it wasn't the earnings that people are focused on, it was a decline of sales of more than 3%. a number of analysts out there were looking for a decline, down 3% was the number and interestingly so is the stock down. the company has a very significant share buy back in place, that also certain helping shore up these shares, got some accounts in there. don't know much about media, but like them buy back and will at least lend some buying strength. let's take a closer look at media networks, at the actual ad sales. 1.35 billion is down. nickelodeon, by far the most watched kids network out there. their ratings decline and they're getting less from advertisers because ofa. they say they're working through that. there was some ratings systemic issues, they don't want to belabor it. but the ceo says you'll see improvement in nickelodeon's ratings. so a few things on the call that may have helped stock actually a

what do you think of viacom? >> viacom is a buy here. the main reason is the paramount and distribution -- the money they can collect from that content. so as so many people are struggling for content, they have a huge content library with paramount. the oscar bounce should help. i saw "hugo." it was a little scary. they also have nick elodeon. we keep it up. >> we do too. have a great weekend. >> you too. >> i can't believe you put on any weight, tyler, over the last 13 years. anyway, straight ahead, a big boom for big blue. the shares are up almost 130% in three years. sneaking up now on $200 a share. what is behind the surge? and can it continue? stick around to find out. power's back in two.  oh! [ baby crying ] ♪ what started as a whisper ♪ every day, millions of people choose to do the right thing. ♪ slowly turned to a scream ♪ there's an insurance company that does that, too. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what's your policy? ♪ amen, omen tdd# 1-800-345-2550 so, i want to trade at a place that really gets wh

it's not transparent so we don't know if it's viacom talking or if it's general motors talking or ifer talking it ought to be transparent. >> stephen: but then the voters might take out on the person who gave the money. >> that would be exactly right. >> stephen: that's terrorism. >> no, a lot of people wouldn't want some of this crap to go out if they had to identify themselves with it. >> this is a family show, are you going to -- >> what is your favorite amendment. >> i think the ninth, that's my favorite. >> stephen: mine's the 19th. >> in franchising women, that's good too. >> stephen: that's good too. >> you know, don't you want to know why you like the ninth amendment. >> what. i thought you might like to know why i like the ninth amendment. >> stephen: not particularly. why do you like the ninth amendment,. >> because it's the one that stlas are things in the constitution that haven't been figured out yet there are ing thises that aren't written down like privacy. >> stephen: so the ninth amendment just basically says or whatever. thank you so much for joining me. >> thank yo

amazon prime now offers programs from viacom, comedy central, and tv land, $75 a year. get ready to add google to the company's offering a cloud of storage system. it will be called drive and will compete with the drop box and the basic service will be free. a study finds sitting in front of your computer might be good for you sometimes. people will visit social networking sites like facebook experience a relaxed part rate as well as lower levels of stress and tension. i am paula faris. >> whatever it takes. >> i was really hoping that we were going to get dumped on last night. i wanted that to be a birthday present for you. happy birthday. >> you could go and buy convertible, midlife crisis. >> you cannot have that every year. >> tomorrow night we could have another few snowflakes, no big deal. 30 for the district, 32 in winchester, 30 at dulles airport, 26 in hagerstown. a little below freezing in many locations. if there's a sidestreets that's not treated, there could be an isolated slick spots leading the neighborhoods, but i'm not very concerned about that. clouds

newspap news corp., viacom, time warner not as much.ncredible cheap money that's out there, we're lower than we've ever been. even bbbs now are borrowing at rates we've never seen for 30 years. >> what a desperate dash for yield that they can even get that. how badly do funds need to get some yield anymore. ought to turn to at&t, verizon, procter & gamble. boy, people are paying common stock -- >> i can't remember having ever seen so much money borrowed to actually repurchase shares in part. >> i've never seen it. >>> coming up next, social media in the skies. using facebook and twitter to pick your seat mate on a plane. complete this sentence. if i could pick who would sit in a seat next to me, it would mean never worrying that blank would plop down in a seat next to me. take a look at this morning's early movers. looking for a better place to put your cash? here's one you may not have thought of: fidelity. now you don't have to go to a bank to get the things you want from a bank. like no-fee atms -- all over the world. free checkwriti

but it may not be a trend for this powerhouse, media-related up 3 percent, which is in line with viacoma florida lawmakers say that is a no no when pay with food stamps and pushing a bill to ban buying junk food. senator, good to have you. >>guest: thank you, thank you very were. >>neil: your heart is not right place to make sure this sort of money from the government is not wasted on stuff but, you know, it is hard to police, and, second, should the efforts be more on getting people off food stamps, period, than deciding what they buy with them. >>guest: well, there is in question our efforts should be directed at helping people get off food stamps. i say most people who are on food stamps want to be on there temporarily. we have a problem with people making withdrawals and transfers at strip clubs and gambling and we removed their ability to do that. and next we deal with their ability, the question that we ask, what should the taxpayer pay for? if we want to give you a helping hand we want to help hungry people, and we want people to receive food. we do not ask people to go to the do

the other was viacom and disney. harolding what picked up in the economy. but news corp. is the one with the most promising results because i made it all possible. good night. ♪ >> bob: hello, i'm bob beckel with andrea tantaros, eric bolling, dana perino, and greg gutfeld. it's 5:00 in new york city. this is "the five." ♪ ♪ >> bob: big story tonight, the santorum sweep. rick santorum winning in three states yesterday. colorado, minnesota, missouri. it looks like his strategy i is comparing romney to obama. >> they have the contracts to make barack obama the issue in the race and not our candidate who is in respects the big issues of the day, just where obama is. >> bob: i have been around presidential politics for 30 years. it woke this morning and when i heard this, this shocked me. i got to tell you, i was just taken aback. >> greg: then you walked home. >> bob: then i went home. i saw you on the way. andrea, who is hurt more here? mitt romney or gingrich? >> andrea: they both get hurt. because look, they were fighting over the conservative vote. santorum and gingrich.

interesting to say what they'll say on the call to see if cbs repeats that theme coming out of ot like viacom and disney. >> dave, comcast earnings earlier proved distribution is doing better than content, at least for the company that is a majority owner here. what did you make of their earnings out? >> well, look, i mean, i think one of the key concerns in the sector overall is the concept that, you know, are we dealing with cord cutting, are we dealing with an echo system in media that's changing the detriment of the incumbent players. i think we got a accepts of, you know what, the subscriber trends are stable, and the business has kind of stabilized. so, you know, i think basically we're seeing a very healthy echo system all over. this is a sector that is benefiting from a tremendous amount of trends. and is trading at relatively really low multiples with really high earnings growth. >> barton, who do you like here? and what's the growth driver in your view for media stocks right now? >> i very much like the content guys versus the distributors. >> okay. >> my favorite pick in the group

. >> caller: today i'm asking you about viacom class b. >> you know what?e buyback, but that's all i like. i don't want you to own it. let's go to jim in ohio. jim? >> caller: boo-yah, cramer! >> boo-yah. >> caller: i just wanted to get your take on baker hughes international. >> i have so many others that i like. i have schlumberger that i like more and ensco. let's go to abbey. >> caller: it's abbey from beautiful long island, new york. >> i had a feeling. what's going on? >> caller: is it still okay to get into vv? >> no, no, no, that has been made. this is like dendreon. we had a gain. we're ringing the register. bing, bing, bing. aaron in michigan! >> caller: give me the spec, what do you think? >> sales are going up. what's not to like? it's good to go. let's go to sam in massachusetts. sam! >> caller: sam, with a big boo-yah from clark university. >> fantastic school. what's going on? >> caller: the question is the 8.3% dividend yield offered by pitney bowes, ppi, too good to be true? >> i no longer trust it. let's have the company back on because al

it's wrort pointing out that viacom had decreases. -- in scatter pricing over the market is significantd there was some question of whether disney would see such strong advertising rates as it has seen. one thing weave seen at abc and espn is the rates are up because the ratings are down the overall ads at abc and espn are pretty much flat. and what accounts for that at espn is the nba lockout. abc has other problems in terms of ratings, et cetera. but disney channel ratings are high. and the revenue as well. >> all right. thanks a lot for that update. keep us filled in here. >>> coming up we will check in on the other after-hours action outside of disney. panera and buffalo wild wings moving in the after-hours session. more "fast money" coming up next. ♪ our machines help identify early stages of cancer, and it's something that we're extremely proud of. you see someone who is saved because of this technology, you know that the things that you do in your life matter. if i did have an opportunity to meet a cancer survivor, i'm sure i could take something positive away from that. [ jocely

it included viacom, korng.up which might fit the dynamic, because it's got so many issues and scripps interactive, they have the balance sheets to do it. those that would do it if they became low in price, they felt it would be coca-cola and 3m. not that they would do it for any other reason than perhaps their peers were better valued than they were. >> allison, any thoughts on that? >> my sense is, you had mentioned people might view these companies showing slower growth, my sense is, you can still pay out a decent amount, particularly after several years. the company is building up strong balance sheets and have healthy opportunities for growth. one thing that's concerned me about companies accumulating a lot of cash is there's reinvestment risk, which is allocating the dollars to the wrong area or merger risks, companies going out making acquisitions. and fewer than half of them with acquisitions are successful. having a high dividend, even if you're a company in a good growth mode, only make acquisitions wh

we know that that hurt some rivals like viacom. >> i don't think there is a va com issue. i think it's a timing issue. what you lost in december i think you'll gain in march. the bcs games were moved to march. i think you'll see a good revenue figure there on advertising, people will look through that. >> david, you're bullish on disney, i know that. what are you looking for in terms of the drivers for the year? what are you expecting comes out of the conference call with analysts in terms of what drives business through the rest of 2012? >> it looks like with the economy improving slightly and the parks doing really well in this quarter that just passed, that they've been effective with some of their promotions. they were kind of quiet about that. but that's what helped to drive attendance. i think we'll continue to see attendance at the parks, that will help the margins there. in addition, as martin mentioned, there's some timing issues that are going to be helping the current quarter that we're in, plus it seems like the advertisers that did pull back to make their own

. >> clearly you should care, but clearly stocks like that can work, viacom, a family controlled companyore shareholder friendly. news corp. is taking a page from that. so, yeah, i think you can still look at it. but be aware of that. >> barton, john, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> all right. when we come back on "power lunch," statten, cholesterol drugs, $30 billion a year. now a safety warning on them from the fda. how the stocks are reacting to that. >>> and big news from gm. they're taking a stake in france. some people are wondering after a few years of a huge taxpayer bailout they're pumping money into a french company. response on the other side of the break. oh! [ baby crying ] ♪ what started as a whisper ♪ every day, millions of people choose to do the right thing. ♪ slowly turned to a scream ♪ there's an insurance company that does that, too. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what's your policy? ♪ amen, omen how do you know which ones to follow? the equity summary score consolidates the ratings of up to 10 independent research providers into a single score that's

we like viacom on that. we also like cbs. interpublic is one of our picks there.erally, we like disney. it's a bellwether, it's a defensive stock. it's really a high-quality name. but i think in order to really own disney in size, you have to argue for an earnings multiple of up in the high teens. and at 15 times earnings when you look longer term, where is that $3 of earnings going to go? if it's going to go to 350, 360, i think there is an argument for multiple expansion. look at some of the businesses structurally, some of the difficult repairs coming up later in the year on advertising and lodging, we would just take a little bit more caution right here right now. remember, the stock's already outperformed. it's outperformed the market by about 12% over the last three months. and we have been extremely bullish proponents of disney for the last year and a half. >> yes. >> up until our downgrade a few weeks ago. maybe we were a little early. we think it's a great company, we just think the stock's probably fully fairly valued. >> absolutely. shares are up about

the key to viacom is they command a demographic, which is the youth demographic, whether it's your kidsmedy central, which attracts the younger people, the advertisers at the end of the day covet. they can solve that problem with better content and they're on that. they're very, very smart people. the market has confidence in them. they know what they're doing. and the ad market i think is going to be very, very strong. the auto business is strong. we just heard last week from ron johnson at jc penney, he's going to be advertising massively. the video game business is good. ea's advertising for "star wars," things are great. >> real quick, who is best to be leveraged the strength you see in the ad business? >> i think the strength in terms of stock prices clearly google. google is very, very underpriced. they have youtube. youtube's viewership was up 72% in the last quarter. ad dollars will follow viewership. they're adding bodies in new york to produce this video. i think they're over 1,000 in that building they've got down in chelsea. >> uh-huh. >> i think google's the big winner here

this deal is licensing thousands of hours of video and thousands of episodes from nine different viacom's cable channels. but this content isn't exclusive to amazon. netflix also has a lot of this content. this deal offers $79 a year. since it launched a year ago, amazon has struck licensing deals with nearly every media con conglomerate. but netflix has over twice amazon streaming videos and dominates the market. but it does face some growing competition. not just from amazon, but also from this upcoming redbox and revise on venture. we'll have to see if amazon decides to pony up for original content like netflix has, which of course is a whole new business. >> sure is. >> back over to you. >> thanks, julia. >> and up next, markets roaring ahead this year. in fact, if you trace back to last october and you count to today, you would find yourself in bull market territory. should you be all in? or are there serious reasons to worry? we will talk headwinds, tail winds and no winds. >> all kinds of winds. let's take a look at the commodities complex. a lot of people say get ready to pay more

we're worried about advertising rates after viacom's miss earlier this week.e're worried about theme parks as it seems like universal, parent company, right? comcast universal. it seems that they have an edge ever since harry potter opened. we're concerned about the movie schedule. so what do we do? okay. disney's what i like to call a core family holding. just a terrific long-term franchise that's run extremely well by ceo bob iger. and for those who are worried let's see what the earnings are before we do anything, anything, buying, selling. he say we might be okay. then we hear from polo ralph lauren on wednesday morning. here's everyone's high-end clothing. and it's repeatedly subjected to second-guessing. was it too warm? did they not sell enough sweaters? is it possible it performs more like dog eat dog tiffany's than polaris and harley-davidson, two of our favorite ultradiscretionary plays i recommended earlier this week. i think ralph lauren will do just fine. and with cotton costs down year over year huge, the surprise will be terrific guidance in the

the head of viacom got $84 million forgetting fired. >> that makes no sense because if they are not performing they get fired and then they get more money than if they had stayed. they work the contracts so if they do get fired they get a substantial amount of money. the problem here is the directors who set their salaries are often their friends and it is this wonderful little -- >> they sit on the compensation board and i will scratch your back if you scratch mine. >> there has to be reform. absolutely there are problems with ceo pay. >> and it is up to the shareholders to demand reform and maybe know are not doing it. >> just leak it is up to the voters to demand reform in congress. >> expect this to be a political football this election year. >> it will be. >> not just warren buffett but you others. >> thanks very much. >> we are just two days away from the next big republican contest. the primaries in arizona and michigan. what happens if mitt romney does not win his home state? our political panel weighs in, up next. >>> and it is hollywood's biggest night of the year. you know what it i

. >> and the ownership of stock by those that control -- viacom is another example. >> do you find over the long term people are more concerned about stock performance than ownership. >> absolutely. if the stock performs nobody complains. if the stock doesn't, you hear more about it. >> kind of like china. they're not free, but nobody is going to complain until -- >> doesn't it bother you he has the power to appoint his own successor, as if it's like a bloodline and this person will be accorded the same respect and power he has? >> one of the great things about stocks, if it bothers you, don't own it. >> it's been disclosed. >> yeah, that's true. >> absolutely a corporate governance issue, but i have to agree with jim, at the end of the day, if the stock performs wells, most of the time it doesn't come to the fore. it's only when they that -- >> eisenberg, union performing miserably underperforming. i think it's great that the hundred million doesn't get paid to him, because he has not done the job. i think it should be predicated on how the stock performs. that's how i judge. >> on thi

there that you're going to see continued levels at the same level of buybacks for time warner, and viacomalking about a very large buyback again that is helping to sustain a stock price despite what has been rocky performance, certainly when it comes to the nickelodeon network, for example, no ratings declines there. you see what it has meant to that stock. you have to wonder where the growth is and where investors may be trying to find that growth. in this group that seems to rely a great deal on the buyback of shares. back to you guys. >> thanks a lot, david. when we come back, what does johnny walker have to do with new york giant victor cruz? plus breaking news on nat gas inventory. stick around. so to save some money, i just got the popular girls from the local middle school to follow me around. ew. seriously? so gross. ew. seriously? that is so gross. ew. seriously? dude that is so totally gross. so gross...i know. there's an easier way to save. geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more. >>> about 45 minutes into trading. irobot getting hammered this morning. pri