Louis Rukeyser

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Louis Rukeyser

Louis Richard Rukeyser (January 30, 1933 – May 2, 2006) was a U.S. business columnist, economic commentator, and television personality. He was best known for his role as host of two television series, Wall $treet Week with Louis Rukeyser, and Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street. He also published two financial newsletters, Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street and Louis Rukeyser's Mutual Funds.

Rukeyser took pride in effectively creating the first television show that focused on Wall Street. With a combination of erudition, plainspokenness, and panache, he made the often arcane workings of the stock market and the economy better known to the mass public for 32 years via Wall Street Week. His long-lived show was produced by Maryland Public Television, a PBS member station, out of their facilities in Owings Mills, Maryland. [1].

Named by "People" as the only sex symbol of the dismal science of economics, Rukeyser won numerous awards and honors over his lifetime.

Rukeyser was famous for his pun-filled humor. In answering a letter on investing in a hairpiece manufacturer, he quipped that "if your money seems to be hair today and gone tomorrow, we'll try to make it grow back by giving the bald facts on how to get your investments toupee." "Television Host Louis Rukeyser Dies", Associated Press, May 4, 2006.

Rukeyser died of multiple myeloma at his Greenwich, Connecticut, home on May 2, 2006.^[1]

1 Career
2 Newsletters
3 Family
4 Personalities of Wall Street
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Career

Rukeyser was born in New York City, the son of financial journalist Merryle Rukeyser. He graduated in 1954 from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in New Jersey.^[2]. He spent the next eleven years as a political and foreign correspondent for the Baltimore Sun newspapers.^[2]

He then moved to ABC television as economics correspondent and commentator. He left ABC in 1973.^[2]

In 1970^[2] , he started the popular PBS series, Wall $treet Week with Louis Rukeyser, which ran for 32 years^[2] before Rukeyser left in a dispute with Maryland Public Television executives over their plans to demote him and use younger hosts^[1]. MPT executives offered him a five minute segment on the new, retooled show; Rukeyser declined. In his final episode, which was broadcast live, he deplored the decision of Maryland Public Television's management and urged viewers to write their PBS stations and clamor for the new financial program he would soon create. Maryland Public Television fired him immediately after the broadcast and erased the master tape; the only existing copies of the broadcast possibly exist at other PBS stations or in home copies.

After Rukeyser's departure, the series was renamed "Wall $treet Week with FORTUNE" and co-hosted by the editorial director of Fortune Magazine, Geoffrey Colvin, along with Karen Gibbs, a former senior business correspondent on the Fox News Channel. Afterwards, viewership struggled along with 1/6th of the audience it had at its peak and never fully recovered. Maryland Public Television finally pulled the plug in June 2005.

Shortly after leaving Wall $treet Week, Rukeyser began a new program, Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street (named after one of his newsletters) on the cable channel CNBC. Highly unusual for a cable network, advertising on the show was limited to before-and-after "underwriting" announcements similar to those on non-commercial broadcast stations. This was done at Rukeyser's insistence^{[citation needed]}, so that Garden City, New York, public station WLIW could offer the program to PBS members who wanted to carry it on a second-run basis. Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street ended its run on December 31, 2004, at Rukeyser's request^[1] after health problems kept him off the show for more than a year.

[edit] Newsletters

The monthly "Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street" newsletter was first published in 1992; two years later, "Louis Rukeyser's Mutual Funds" was started.^[2] As of May 2006, Rukeyser's monthly newsletters continued to be published.