“Wall Street Week,” the venerable program that’s been around in one form or another since 1970, goes beyond the usual focus on the ups and downs of the stock market.
The program, originally produced by Maryland Public Television and hosted by Louis Rukeyser, has long focused on interviews with prominent Wall Streeters. Starting Friday, September 20, the show will instead feature a series of entrepreneurial stories drawn from journalism reporting from Bloomberg, which currently produces the show and has aired it on its cable network and other properties since 2020.
“We thought we could change it from interview-driven to story-driven, more like a traditional news magazine,” said David Westin, the show’s host and former president of ABC News, during a recent interview. A “60 Minutes” that specializes in business administration and economics? “I asked about it,” Westin says. “I’m not sure this has ever been done before.”
Rukeyser might be able to come up with a clever opening monologue to explain why Bloomberg is making such a move, but simply put, the company, like other broadcasters, needs to make radical updates to old formats if it wants to keep its content in front of viewers’ eyes. younger generations are more accustomed to streaming video on the fly than tuning into a show on a prescribed day and time.
“We’re doing our very best to make sure we’re not just linear television,” says Westin. “If you’re going to stream, it lives forever, and you need content that will last.” Not only does a focus on the stock market’s gyrations make such a program less relevant over time, he adds, but many of the show’s viewers are “sophisticated investors” who can easily turn to financial news sites for all kinds of statistical work. -ups.
Many TV pillars are being reworked in the streaming era. CBS News plans to unveil a heavily reworked version of its “CBS Evening News” later this year, with two anchors and other contributors, instead of the single journalist and desk that has become the format’s standard. NBCUniversal has completely reworked the way it shows the Olympics, with more nods to the streaming audience and a new primetime presentation that curates events and adds celebrities to the mix.
The first episode of “Wall Street Week” in its new version will include segments on the business challenges of higher education; a look at how New York restaurants operate; and a two-part story about Detroit and Ford Motor Co.
As part of the new focus, the program will be given wider distribution. “Wall Street Week” airs Fridays on Bloomberg at 6:00 PM Eastern, and then, starting September 22, Sundays at 2:00 PM Eastern on 195 PBS stations with WORLD digital channels in markets representing 77% of U.S. TV households . WORLD aims to curate top news, documentary and non-fiction programs from the public media.
Bloomberg has worked with public media in the past and syndicated “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversation”S.” The business news giant began discussing such a prospect with GBH, the Boston affiliate of PBS, after it relaunched “Wall Street Week” in 2020. GBH is also involved in keeping episodes of Rukeyser’s run on the show at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. , a joint project with the Library of Congress.
There is some hope that many Bloomberg reporters will contribute stories to the show, Westin says, allowing the company to highlight its presence both in the U.S. and abroad.
While the show itself is a legendary TV brand, it has also had a tumultuous history. “Wall Street Week” first came to notice during IoT’s 32-year run on PBS. Longtime stock market enthusiasts would regularly tune in to hear Rukeyser weave in pun-filled thoughts about the direction of the Dow Jones and other indicators, and to chat with financial sages. As ratings fell, new hosts from Fortune magazine were brought in, but they did little to increase viewership. Maryland Public Television and PBS ended the show in 2005.
But “Wall Street Week” found some new market swings. The show was eventually licensed by SkyBridge Capital, an investment firm founded by Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as White House communications director under President Donald Trump. SkyBridge streamed its version of the program online in 2015. In 2016, it was picked up by Fox Business Network. But in January 2018, the show, which was then taken over by Maria Bartiromo, was retitled “Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street.”
Bloomberg continues to license the name “Wall Street Week” from Maryland Public Television, meaning the show still generates some revenue for one of its original backers.
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