Such a drastic expansion of Apple-related show floor space will no doubt inspire speculation that the Mac maker plans to put in an appearance at CES. But that seems unlikely given the company’s reasons for bowing out of Macworld. “Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers,” the company said at the time. “The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.”

In any event, this is unfortunate news for Macworld and IDG, the publishing company that runs it. Without Steve Jobs or even Apple (AAPL) to help it upstage CES as Macworld has done in some years past, the event has far less to offer attendees and presenters than before. Certainly, no one is going to be decamping from Vegas in the middle of CES this year to hit Macworld. There’s no reason to. And with CES ramping up its efforts to woo Apple accessory manufacturers and retailers, well, things aren’t looking too good for Macworld, are they?

PREVIOUSLY:

• Apple Investors: “Philnote” Just Doesn’t Have the Same Ring to It
• Oh My God, They Killed Macworld! You Bastards!
• Macworld Without Steve? That’s Like “Baywatch” Without Hasselhoff

I know that “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart does not need even more praise for his spot-on comic and very real jabs at the CNBC financial cable network and its milquetoast coverage of the financial crisis, pre and post.

The silliness that prevails too much over doing serious and rigorous reporting that Stewart takes perfect aim at is a major problem.

Taking CEO spinning at face value and letting them yammer on on air without being challenged much at all has always been excruciating to watch at best and woefully irresponsible at worst.

But, to my mind, the most important thing that he elicited out of CNBC’s most famous stock jester, Jim Cramer, was the part of the interview discussing using the malleable press to float fictional rumors about companies in order to make money on the negative news.

While Cramer at first tried to deny he did it, Stewart had the videotape of the “Mad Money” host talking about the practice, specifically in regard to Apple (AAPL).

His appalling idea to make a quick buck? Making it up that the mobile carriers did not like the iPhone right before Macworld, in this case in 2006.

“And this is very easy because the people who write about Apple want that story, and you can claim that it’s credible because you spoke to someone at Apple, because Apple doesn’t…comment,” said Cramer cavalierly, as if he was not talking about a way to essentially steal other people’s money and hurt Apple unfairly, to interviewer Aaron Task, then at Cramer’s own TheStreet.com.

“So it’s really an ideal short. And again if I were short Apple, I’d pick up the phone and I’d do that today.“

Bernie Madoff would be so proud, if he wasn’t otherwise imprisoned for life!

Kind of puts all those Steve-Jobs-Is-Dead-Right-Now rumors of a few months ago into a new light?

It’s been obvious that the legendary Apple CEO has been quite ill from his appearance alone.

But, as BoomTown has always maintained, the rumors written without any serious reporting about him were also a troublesome issue because it was that clear short-sellers played a large part in stoking the fear about his imminent demise, given how important Jobs has been to Apple.

(Although, this has not seemed to stop Apple from releasing a lot of really cool stuff of late, like the new Shuffle, which Walt Mossberg reviewed here.)

While Apple has not been adequately forthcoming, either, about the Jobs situation, that does not mean the press–as Stewart correctly points out–should not try to actually do its job and dig for what is really going on rather than just slap up unsubstantiated blather.

“It’s not a f@#*ing game,” said Stewart perfectly. Indeed not.

You can see Cramer cynically discussing the Apple stock manipulation tricks at the 6:45-minute mark of Part 2, but here is the entire Stewart well-deserved roasting of Cramer in three parts.

(And at the bottom is the Task interview with Cramer too.)

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

TheStreet.com Interview:

First, some data points:

• Gawker Media’s Nick Denton reports a big traffic spike at his sites in January–298 million page views, a 30 percent year-over-year increase. That’s even though one of his biggest annual eyeball attractors–Steve Jobs at MacWorld–never materialized.
• Blip.tv CEO Mike Hudack tells me that uploads to his Web video network have increased 50 percent so far this year.
• Now News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace, citing comScore numbers, notes that its U.S. traffic shot up last month as well: Unique visitors were up 10 percent, which is worth noting for a (relatively) old social network, and those folks spent 30 percent more time on the site than they did a year ago. (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)
• Obligatory Twitter traffic stat: 2.6 million uniques in January, up 1,362 percent over the last year.
• ComScore’s (SCOR) overall numbers for Web usage for the last month: Uniques up 4.1 percent, page views up 3.1 percent, time spent per visitor up 2.5 percent.

Is any of this meaningful? Hard to say: Any single site can argue that it has done something to generate more visits and engagement from its users: MySpace has its MySpace Music site, Twitter is the buzziest start-up of the last 12 months, etc.

And last month also happened to feature Barack Obama’s inauguration, which was a huge Web traffic driver.

Still… there aren’t that many more Americans who are getting online for the first time at this point. Isn’t it reasonable to assume that a wide variety of sites is posting big traffic gains because many of us are now unemployed or underemployed? And that we’ve got more a lot of downtime to surf and click?

Alas, all those eyeballs aren’t translating to dollars for many of these publishers: Just ask Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL, which saw page views increase 69 percent during the last three months of 2008, but saw ad revenue drop 18 percent.

But I digress. If for some reason you do find yourself with more time on your hands, might I suggest this trio of themed YouTube videos? Enjoy. And good luck.

[Image Credit: Daquella Manera]

Brothers Blake and Jason Krikorian, CEO and SVP-business development, are out, effective immediately. Jason Hirschhorn, who runs the company’s Sling Media Entertainment unit, plans on staying through the end of February; Ben White, chief creative officer at the entertainment group, will stay on through Feb. 1.

Some background from paidContent’s Staci Kramer, who had the story first:

Also leaving: Greg Wilkes, VP-sales. I’ve been told COO John Gilmore will take the reins for now but that may not be official. While no one is talking about any differences, there certainly is a big cultural gap between the tech-creative side and the traditional cable team at EchoStar.”

To tease that out: The Sling team can rightly point to a string of successes–the company racked up a number of awards at both the Consumer Electronics Show and MacWorld last week–but if things were humming smoothly at Echostar, you’d think the company would find a way to make them stick around.

The Slingbox is a potentially disruptive technology, but it’s still nascent, and Sling.com just launched late last year and will need a motivated team to help it gain traction in a crowded field. All those involved say they’ll be taking time off; everyone who knows the team involved finds that hard to believe.

The refresh may happen yet, however. Apple (AAPL) has on many occasions uncrated new products on the heels of Macworld. In February of 2008, the company announced new iPhone & iPod touch models. In February of 2006 it debuted the Intel Mac mini and iPod Hi-Fi. In January 2005 it uncrated new PowerBooks and a month later, it announced a new iPod mini and an update to iPod photo.

Clearly there’s quite a precedent for post-Macworld announcements, and in all likelihood this year will see a few as well. Certainly, an Apple desktop event later this month or in early February would be an elegant way for the company to dovetail the official release of iLife ’09 with some new desktop hardware, celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Macintosh and prove once and for all that it doesn’t need Macworld to publicize new product releases.

Digital Daily was on hand at Macworld ’09 Monday. Despite the flurry of wonky reporting about the health and/or “imminent death” of Steve Jobs–put into perspective here by BoomTown–nothing too remarkable happened during Apple’s (AAPL) final appearance at the annual event. Phil Schiller did a solid job delivering the keynote in Jobs’s place, introducing a new 17-inch MacBook Pro with an eight-hour internal battery and some innovative updates to iWork and iLife. Schiller ended his keynote with the announcement of changes in pricing and digital rights management for iTunes, punctuated by the surprise appearance of crooner Tony Bennett. Apparently, as Bennett sang, the best is yet to come. Crack photojournalist Adam Tow was on hand to capture the keynote in its entirety–All Things Digital’s photo coverage can be found here.

MediaMemo reported from CES about the pervasive 3-D theme of the conference and wondered whether people would pay cash to see a football game in 3-D at a theater instead of just staying home. There was the ongoing litany of the casualties of the econalypse: “Semantic” ad network Peer39 shut down its ad operation this week, Hearst is about to pull the plug on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Forbes announced layoffs and Sir Howard Stringer announced the elimination of thousands of jobs at Sony (SNE). MediaMemo also caught the much anticipated introduction of Palm’s (PALM) new smartphone, the Palm Pre, and its new Web OS, a combo Palm deems superior to the iPhone and that many others consider Palm’s last chance for survival. The product’s success or failure will have a lot to do with its pricing, about which there’s much disbelief.

BoomTown had the lowdown this week on an amusing rumor about a Microsoft-backed (MSFT) run at Yahoo (YHOO), the emergence of Carol Bartz as the top prospect for Yahoo CEO and Microsoft’s deal with Verizon (VZ) and Dell (DELL) to distribute search. Jerry Yang submitted to the all-seeing eye of BoomTown’s Flip camera along with Yahoo President Sue Decker to talk about Yahoo’s new product, Connected TV. The camera also caught some chatty attendees and a few demos, including one of a new Disney (DIS) music product given by a guy who looked like a member of ZZ Top.

Speaking of ZZ Top, catch gadget godfather Walt Mossberg trying out some 3-D glasses on his annual odyssey around the convention floor. All he needs is a longer beard and a ’32 Ford and he could be a band member, too. Walt and colleague Katie Boehret caught many of the more interesting gadgets on video, and Walt previewed some more for FOX News.

More next week.

Was it a great keynote? Well, no. Phil Schiller actually did a great job delivering it. Has anyone watched CEOs from other companies? They’d be lucky to have their keynotes delivered by Schiller, let alone Jobs. Apple followers are spoiled.”

— The Macalope puts “the worst Macworld ever” in perspective

With Macworld out of the way (basic verdict: Phil Schiller did not bomb), a chunk of the crack All Things Digital squad is now winging its way both east and west to the annual gadgetopocalypse in Las Vegas, a.k.a. the Consumer Electronics Show.

Despite the fact that the show is feeling the pinch of the economy–I was able to get a better room at a cheaper price last night, which was unheard of in the past–and that there are really no big products to speak of, except perhaps the new Palm (PALM) smartphone, CES is still one of the biggest and most important gatherings of the tech year.

Las Vegas turns into a geek moshpit every year–with the spicier pornies thrown in, with that industry’s convention also taking place at the same time–as legions of vendors, buyers, press and others converge to be overwhelmed for days by noise, long lines for cabs, keynotes, demos and more.

That also means the ATD team, including: Walt Mossberg, who gets the kind of attention from techies at CES normally reserved for Brangelina; Mossberg Solution columnist Katherine Boehret, who trolls the convention center floor looking for cool new products; MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka, who has scheduled himself to the gills; and me, who has not.

Still, there will be parties thrown by Facebook, CBS (CBS) and more to attend, a cornucopia of gadgetry to try and panels to moderate (I am manning one supersession called, I kid you not: “What Will They Think of Next? Consumer Technology in 2025″).

Also, I’ll be honest, gambling at the Pussycat Dolls Lounge with a passel of nerds.

Between the hands of poker, look for our ongoing coverage over the next few days, including interviews, videos and news (we hope!).

It will all begin tonight with coverage of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s preshow opening keynote, taking over from longtime first-nighter Bill Gates.

Until then, here is the fabulous Ann-Margret doing a mean bugaloo in “Viva Las Vegas” (the Pussycat Dolls have nothing on her) with super-handsome-phase Elvis Presley singing like a dream:

Well, they were disappointed, but they knew they were going to be disappointed going in, so it shouldn’t have come as a shock, right?

Said Robert Francello, head of equity trading for Apex Capital, “There were some innovative products, but no true blockbusters. People were bullish going into it, and now they’re kind of taking money off the table.”

Indeed, Apple shares closed down 1.65 percent today, a clear reflection of the lackluster announcements made this morning.

“[The] Macworld keynote was underwhelming as expected,” said Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. “The lack of significant announcements adds clarity to Steve Jobs’ absence. We believe he remains the primary spokesman and active leader of Apple.”

Well, obviously. He did say as much yesterday, didn’t he? That being the case, perhaps there’s something to be read into the first song of the short Tony Bennett set that closed today’s event, “The Best is Yet to Come.” Apple (AAPL) didn’t uncrate the new iMacs or Mac minis that many expected of it this morning. Nor did it demo Snow Leopard, the next iteration of OS X. Perhaps it will in the months ahead, at its own event and on its own terms. And with Steve Jobs presiding, of course. The best is yet to come, right?

Macworld ’09 Keynote Coverage:

• Macworld ’09 LIVE
• Macworld ’09: All About the Mac, iLife ’09, Faces and Places
• Macworld ’09: iMovie ’09
• Macworld ’09: Garageband “Learn to Play,” “Artist Lessons”
• Macworld ’09: iWork ’09, iWork.com
• Macworld ’09: 17-inch MacBook Pro With 8-Hour Battery
• Macworld ’09: One Last Thing–DRM-Free iTunes Plus, 3G iTunes and Tony Bennett
• Macworld 2009: Live and in Living Color [PHOTO SLIDESHOW]