Who is louis rukeyser

His only bias was toward optimism. All Sections. About Us. B2B Publishing. Business Visionaries. Hot Property. Times Events. The minute program was public television's longest-running weekly prime-time series, second only to CBS' venerable "60 Minutes" in overall TV tenure.

The series was canceled by MPT in June after three years of audience erosion that followed Rukeyser's departure. The reason for its success was Louis Rukeyser. He was the franchise -- proof that the star system worked even for PBS. Rukeyser's ability to translate economics into compelling television talk helped make investors out of millions of Americans: "In essence, what he did was bring Wall Street to Main Street -- he made Wall Street understandable in terms of Main Street," says Frank Cappiello, a money manager who appeared as a panelist on Rukeyser's first PBS telecast in and his last in , as well as his first and last on CNBC.

And every week, Lou would be there on TV explaining the changes -- from commodities to money market funds -- in very simple terms to millions of viewers, many of whom became investors as a result of what they learned from him and the experts he brought in.

A wide-ranging economic expertise only begins to describe the formula that made Rukeyser one of public television's first major stars -- along with Alistair Cooke , host of "Masterpiece Theatre," and "Sesame Street's" Big Bird. The New York City native, who was dubbed "the dismal science's only sex symbol" by People magazine, was known within the ranks of PBS as "The Big Bird of Prime Time" because of the underwriting support, ratings and viewer pledges that he brought to the fledgling public broadcasting lineup in the s.

In an interview shortly before his own death in August, Baltimore financial analyst Julius Westheimer, who was a recurring panelist on "Wall Street Week" for 29 years, said Rukeyser never forgot the audience: "Lou always said that the best educators throughout history were in part entertainers, and he stressed that to those of us who were regulars on the show. He also told us to talk about money, not economics. At the height of the show's popularity, it ran on more than stations and had a weekly viewership of more than 4.

Rukeyser was known for frequently using puns in his broadcasts. He regarded his audience as intelligent people who were not experts in either economics or the financial markets. Rukeyser hosted Wall Street Week on PBS until , at which time the producers decided to replace him with a younger host. They renamed the show Wall Street Week "Fortune," named after Fortune magazine, but it never had the same success and was canceled in June He died of bone cancer in May Wealth Management.

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