“Wall Street Week,” the venerable program that has been around in one form or another since 1970, is moving beyond its usual focus on the ups and downs of the stock market.
The program, which was 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 enterprise stories drawn from the reporting of the journalism of Bloomberg, which currently produces the show and has aired it on its cable network and other properties since 2020.
“We thought we’d turn it from being interview-driven to being story-driven, more like a traditional newsmagazine,” says David Westin, the show’s host and a former president of ABC News, during a recent interview. A “60 Minutes” that specializes in business and economics? “I’ve asked around about it,” says Westin. “I’m not sure it has ever been done before.”
Rukeyser might devise a clever opening soliloquy to explain why Bloomberg is making such a move, but, simply put, the company, like other broadcasters, has to make radical updates to old formats if it is to keep its content in front of the eyes of younger generations more accustomed to streaming video at a moment’s notice than tuning to a show at a prescribed day and time.
“We are making a very concerted effort to make sure we are not just linear TV,” says Westin. “When you go to streaming, it lives forever, and you need to have content that lasts for a long time.” Not only does a focus on the gyrations of the stock market 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 mainstays are being reworked in the streaming era. CBS News plans to unveil a vastly reworked version of its “CBS Evening News” later this year that features two anchors and other contributors, rather than the single newsperson and a desk that has become the standard of the format. NBCUniversal has completely reworked the way it shows the Olympics, with more nods to streaming audience and a new primetime presentation that curates events and adds celebrity into the mix.
The first episode of “Wall Street Week” in its new iteration will feature segments on the business challenges of higher education; a look at how New York restaurants operate; and a two-part story on Detroit and Ford Motor Co.
As part of its new focus, the program will gain wider distribution. “Wall Street Week” will air Fridays on Bloomberg at 6 p.m. eastern, and then, and starting on September 22, air Sundays at 2 p.m. 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 programming from public media.
Bloomberg has worked with public media in the past, syndicating “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations.” 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 maintaining episodes of Rukeyser’s run on the show in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, a joint project with the Library of Congress.
There is some hope that many Bloomberg reporters will want to contribute stories to the show, says Westin, which will allow the company to spotlight its presence both in the U.S. and overseas.
Though the program is itself a storied TV brand, it has also had a tumultuous history. “Wall Street Week,” first gained notice during iots 32-year run on PBS. Longtime aficionados of the stock market would tune in regularly to hear Rukeyser weave pun-filled thoughts about the direction of the Dow and other indicators and talk to financial sages. As ratings fell, new hosts from Fortune magazine were brought in, but did little to improve viewership. Maryland Public Television and PBS ended the show in 2005.
But “Wall Street Week” found a few new market gyrations. The show eventually was 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 of 2018, the show, which had then been taken over by Maria Bartiromo, was retitled “Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street.”
Bloomberg continues to license the “Wall Street Week” name from Maryland Public Television, meaning that the show still generates some revenue for one of its original backers.
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