I'm (Almost) Famous!!

The other day, during my daily lunch time perv-out walk at the mall with the guys from work, we started discussing the show Undercover Boss, which airs on CBS Sunday nights. The discussion originally started when I expressed my opinion that the show is really nothing more than free advertising for the companies featured. If you've seen the show you will have noticed that at the end of each episode the CEO or COO "rewards" a few hardworking employees with a tiny cash bonus or a $5,000 scholarship (not sure what kind of an education that's supposed to buy in the States). These rewards pale in comparison to the financial benefits which accrue to the company after appearing in a week's worth of promotional ads in the lead up to an episode. Trust me, no CEO would agree to take part in the show if it didn't make his company look good, and after 7 episodes the CEO's are batting 1000% in that regard. The question we were curious about was how shares in the companies faired after an appearance on Undercover Boss. So I did what anyone would do: I emailed the author of the Wall Street Journal's "Numbers Guy blog". A few days later, he emailed me back with a link to a full article on the questions I had asked. It turns out appearing on the show was a very good financial decision for the CEOs who participated. How good? Rather than rehash his findings, here's the article: http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2010/04/09/undercover-boss-the-perfect-stock-market-strategy/tab/print/ Quite interesting results. However, they only raised more questions. Like what about opportunities for insider trading? CBS doesn't publicly announce which company will appear in future episodes until the end of each Sunday night episode. However, network execs/producers and company reps will have known for months. SEC, care to take a look at which insiders were snatching up shares after the lineup was finalized? Granted, the SEC is incompetent (Exhibit A being Bernie Madoff) but it would be interesting to know who, aside from regular investors, has profited from the show.