as for WSW, I loved to hear Jim Grant wax poetic. If I didn’t learn much watching WSW, I learned to use my thesaurus whenever Grant was a guest.

marty zweig – nice guy, but the personality suited to a newsletter writer.

Any idea how long Paul Kangas can last. i love the guy, but if that teleprompter ever stopped working – I don’t think he cwould utter a word.

Felt like we got to know the panelists. Frank looked like a gangster you’d like to now. Sorry to hear about Dudack’s firing. Still remember when she had her makeover; was quite a change. Before that she was pretty nerdy but seemed nice.

Thanks for bringing up the thing with Gail Dudack. My father and I used to watch WSW every Friday night for years when I lived at home growing up. Rukeyser was almost always the eternal Bull.

I don’t think he is the standard to measure anyone against either. He had a near monopoly on financial reporting back then.

I must admit I would love to hear his thoughts on the mess we find ourselves in now.

I recall that Rukeyser unceremoniously dismissed Gail Dudack from his panel of “elves” in the late-90s for not being sufficiently bullish. To make it worse, he announced her firing on the air and didn’t tell her before-hand. Here’s what James Grant wrote in the NYTimes following Rukeyser’s death:

“An eternal bull on the stock market, the more bullish, and less tolerant of dissenting bears he became, the higher the averages climbed. On the program of Nov. 5, 1999, Mr. Rukeyser announced the firing of the veteran panelist Gail Dudak for her 156 consecutive weeks of bearishly errant forecasting. Ms. Dudak heard the news from her neighbors the next morning. The stock market peaked four months later.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/03/business/media/03rukeyser.html?pagewanted=2

Michael Lewis also wrote a piece about Rukeyser in The Money Culture and he comes across as very pompous and full of himself. I read the piece sometime back but can’t find a link to it. Here’s someone else’s description, which is consistent with what I remember.
http://www.suite101.com/discussion.cfm/investing/4094/623712

I have never understood the lionization of Louis Rukeyser, except for the fact that he was the first to do it. He was successful because, at the time, there was no one attempting to explain Wall Street to the public. It didn’t matter that he did a poor job of explaining how things worked. He tended to perpetuate the myth of his panelists/guests as Masters of the Universe. Also, his format and jokes became very stale. I watched the show for years and almost always was left at the end of the program with the empty feeling of not having learned anything.

It’s no coincidence that his program went-away as the Internet was coming into its own. If one knows where to look, there are much better sources of financial information.

Consuelo Mack’s program on PBS is the most similar program to Wall Street Week currently on the air. However, it is far superior in terms of quality and educational content.

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BR: Dylan is going to MSNBC (June 29th) , and I am not a broadcaster or a journalist — merely an interested observer.

By all accounts? Then surely I should be able to find one, but no.