Rukeyser Out at Wall Street Week In Advance of 'Young' Format

March 28, 2002 3:52 PM

Rukeyser Out at Wall Street Week In Advance of 'Young' Format
    The long-time host ever in search of 'value in today's markets' quit rather than accept a diminished role in a revamp of the show's format. Guest hosts will replace him next season until a permanent host is found.
    PBS is quietly removing references to elves from the W$W website. The new show will be a co-production with Fortune Magazine. (Ick.) Guess its Paul Kangas for me!
posted by rschram (16 comments total)

Rukeyser's on-air announcement that led to his immediate dismissal.
posted by rschram at 3:59 PM on March 28, 2002

The show is doomed. For reasons I've never understood, news producers think younger people simply want to watch younger anchors and hosts. Yet all available evidence shows that this is complete BS. (How many of you ever watched "Take Five" on CNN? How many of you ever even heard of it?) Gen-X and Gen-Y types may prefer youth in their entertainment, but they want their news and serious information from people with experience (which is why the ancient Kurt Loder is still on MTV when the next-youngest person they allow on the air is 25 years younger).

Not that I think MPT is going to so over-the-top stupid as to make some newly-fired VJ the next host. But they won't get anyone who will deliver them more viewers than Rukeyser.
posted by aaron at 4:16 PM on March 28, 2002

Doesn't the Fortune team have enough access to the air/cable through their corporate sister, CNN? So much for PBS as a source of diversity of news sources.
posted by fpatrick at 4:28 PM on March 28, 2002

.... so over-the-top stupid as to make some newly-fired VJ the next host.

Unless it's this fired VJ. I'd watch the farm report if she read it.

Sorry. Carry on.
posted by jonmc at 4:32 PM on March 28, 2002

Hey, I thought I was the only one that knew about Paul Kangas?!?!?

Anyway....I was not a big fan of Rukeyser anyway, especially since I recall him getting embroiled in some insider trading thing in the late '80's. Besides, if he's so smart, why didn't he negotiate for total control over the show at the height of his powers?
posted by PeteyStock at 4:45 PM on March 28, 2002

That VJ, jon, is already destroying ... oh, Oliver, are you around? You tell him. I don't even want to think about it.
posted by aaron at 5:00 PM on March 28, 2002

I thought Alison Stewart had a job already.
posted by jjg at 5:00 PM on March 28, 2002

"Viewer reaction to Louis Rukeyser's abrupt departure from Wall Street Week after 32 years has been unprecedented in volume and venom, with fans threatening to withhold contributions, PBS stations report."
posted by aaron at 5:40 PM on March 28, 2002

Yet another example of PBS shooting itself in the foot, by fixing something that wasn't broken.
posted by pmurray63 at 6:55 PM on March 28, 2002

Will anybody on the new show be called a high finance hottie by the Honolulu advertiser? We think not.
posted by raysmj at 7:08 PM on March 28, 2002

Will anybody on the new show be called a high finance hottie by the Honolulu advertiser? We think not.
posted by raysmj at 7:08 PM on March 28, 2002

Ray, I implore you to never again use the words "Rukeyser" and "hottie" in the same sentence. It's bad enough he's now mixed up in my head with my beloved Alison.
posted by jonmc at 8:10 PM on March 28, 2002

I don't watch NBR if Paul Kangas is off for the night. Louis Rukeyser is also much liked here at my house.
posted by bjgeiger at 8:32 PM on March 28, 2002

Public broadcasting seems to have an endemic problem with this sort of thing. Look at Bob Vila This Old House, Siskel and Ebert Sneak Previews, Christopher Lowell The Connection, and so forth. (Not that commercial television is immune -- see especially Late Night -- but there it's more obviously "just business" and less psychically disturbing to fans or people involved.) It even happens in local PBSland -- in Chicago we have Ben Wild Chicago (left because "tired of format", went on to produce nearly-identical format (but duller) Ben Loves Chicago for commercial TV), and Iraq Glass The Wild Room, in which he experimented with the formats that would become This American Life -- which he agreed to do and syndicate while leaving behind his partner and onetime pal Gary Covino, who sourced for a bitter hack piece in the Chicago Reader's Hot Type column a couple of years ago.
posted by dhartung at 9:42 PM on March 28, 2002

Please tell me that Christopher Lowell thing is a mental typo.
posted by aaron at 11:38 PM on March 28, 2002

Argh! Yes, I knew it when I typed it and meant to go back and change it. I also screwed up Ben Hollis's name. But anyway I was almost wholly aware of Christopher Lydon second-hand, as the show wasn't run in Chicago.
posted by dhartung at 6:32 AM on March 29, 2002