November 20, 1970: "Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser" Premieres

November 20, 1970: Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser premieres on PBS, broadcast from the studios of Maryland Public Television, led by WMPB-Channel 22, in the Baltimore suburb of Owings Mills.

Louis Richard Rukeyser was born on January 30, 1933 in Manhattan, and grew up in nearby New Rochelle, New York. His father, Merryle Rukeyser, was a financial journalist. At Princeton University, he wrote his senior thesis on Senator Joseph McCarthy, and his roommate was Wayne Rogers, who later starred on M*A*S*H. When Rogers became a high-powered investor after leaving acting, he was a frequent guest on Rukeyser's programs.

Rukeyser became a political and foreign correspondent for The Baltimore Sun, and became well-known enough in Baltimore for its PBS station to ask him to host a TV show about how international markets affected the American economy. The show, airing every Friday night at the close of a business week, was a hit, and became one nationally when PBS proper picked it up.

He took pride in creating the first television show which focused on the American stock markets, using a combination of erudition, plainspokenness, and panache to make the arcane workings of the stock market and the economy better known to the public. Like fellow PBS stars Fred Rogers and Julia Child, and later Carl Sagan, Bob Ross and Bob Vila, Rukeyser explained difficult things in a way that the average viewer could understand, without treating them like a child (or, in Mr. Rogers' case, he was talking to children, but treated them as though their feelings mattered.)

If he spoke well of a company on his Friday night broadcast, and it did well in trading the following Monday, it was said to benefit from "The Rukeyser Effect." Although an ardent capitalist, he was not a stereotypically stodgy old-time Wall Street conservative, reveling in humor. For example: In answering a letter on investing in a hairpiece manufacturer, he said, "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."

People magazine named him "the only sex symbol of the dismal science." (Historian Thomas Carlyle had labeled economics "the dismal science" in an 1849 essay.) In 1987, Jon Lovitz impersonated him on Saturday Night Live. In 1989, Wall Street Week was mentioned on an episode of the sitcom Family Ties; while Rukeyser himself was mentioned on a 1995 episode of Seinfeld.

By the 1990s, Wall Street Week faced increasing competition from rivals like CNBC. In 2002, acknowledging the fact that he was 69 years old -- but ignoring the fact that he was as popular as ever -- PBS executives wanted to replace him with a younger host to help boost ratings, offering him a 5-minute segment on a newly retooled version of the show, but he turned it down, with a rather pointed farewell on March 22, 2002.

Sensing a golden opportunity, CNBC offered him a new show, which was named Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street -- unless his PBS show, he now had top billing over Wall Street itself. But it didn't last long, as his health began to fail, and his absences and need for substitute hosts became more frequent. His last installment aired on December 31, 2004, and he died on May 2, 2006, at the age of 73.

His brother, William S. Rukeyser, was the founding managing editor of Money magazine in 1972, and the managing editor of Fortune, the financial magazine of Time, Inc.

PBS kept his old show going, under the name Wall Street Week with Fortune, going until June 24, 2005, hosted by Geoff Colvin and Karen Gibbs. It returned in 2015, on Fox Business Network, as simply Wall Street Week. Since 2020, it has been broadcast by Bloomberg Television, and hosted by David Westin.

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November 20, 1970 was a Friday. Actress Sabrina Lloyd was born.

Baseball was out of season. There was 1 college football game played that night, and it was an upset: Number 14 San Diego State lost to Long Beach State, 27-11 at Anaheim Stadium. The school known then as "California State College, Long Beach," and renamed "California State University, Long Beach" in 1972, usually played its games at Veterans Memorial Stadium, but with Aztecs fans coming up from San Diego, they were able to sell 39,000 tickets at what's now named Angel Stadium of Anaheim.

There were 6 games in the NBA:

* The Boston Celtics beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 116-112 at the Boston Garden.

* The Detroit Pistons beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 120-112 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* The Baltimore Bullets beat the Phoenix Suns, 121-110 at the Baltimore Civic Center (now the CFG Bank Arena).

* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 117-100 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.

* The San Diego Rockets beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 121-106 at the San Diego Sports Arena (now the Pechanga Arena).

* And the San Francisco Warriors beat the Buffalo Braves, 123-108 at the Cow Palace outside San Francisco in Daly City, California.

There were 4 games in the American Basketball Association:

* The New York Nets lost to the Denver Rockets, 121-103 at the Denver Auditorium Arena.

* The Kentucky Colonels beat the Carolina Cougars, 100-98 at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina.

* The Virginia Squires beat the Pittsburgh Condors, 151-113 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh. Charlie Scott of the Squires led all scorers on the night with 41 points.

* And the Texas Chaparrals beat the Indiana Pacers, 140-126 at the Moody Coliseum in the Dallas suburb of University Park, Texas.

There was 1 game in the NHL: The Vancouver Canucks beat the Los Angeles Kings, 7-1 at the Pacific Coliseum in Denver. The Canucks got 7 goals from 7 different players, the 1st from Pat Quinn, who went on to coach them to their 1st Stanley Cup Finals in 1982.