Louis Rukeyser has found a new home on CNBC, and so far, 15 PBS affiliates
have agreed to re-air the show after it appears twice on CNBC on Friday nights.
WLIW, a Long Island, N.Y.-based PBS affiliate, is handling the
redistribution of the program, which affiliates can have for free.
They are allowed to air the new show any time after midnight on Friday
Eastern time, and before the market opens on Monday morning, says Susan
Soberman, spokeswoman at WLIW.
Top-25 affiliates that plan to show the program is WLIW and WNET in New York,
WTTW in Chicago, TPT in the Twin Cities and WMFE in Orlando, Fla. Other
affiliates include WCTE in Cookeville, Tenn.; OETA in Oklahoma City; KLVX in Las
Vegas; WVIA in Scranton, Pa.; KHET in Honolulu; WSIU/WUSI in Carbondale, Ill.;
KEDT in Corpus Christi, Texas; KTXT in Lubbock, Texas; KOCV in Odessa, Texas;
WPBS in Watertown, New York; and WBGU in Bowling Green, Ohio.
The whole situation appears to be annoying PBS President Pat Mitchell, who
sent a four-page memo to PBS affiliate general managers asking them not to run
Rukeyser's show in favor of supporting the new show PBS is producing.
'... surely, to offer Louis' new show,' she wrote, 'can only be counterproductive
to building the strength of the 8:30 Friday night series Wall Street
Week with Fortune.'
In the memo, Mitchell told affiliates that 'While I wish Lou well in his new endeavor and say again that I regret
his decision not to continue with WSW, I will regret even more if he
uses his campaign of misinformation and misrepresentation to lure public
television stations into a response that seems destined to create more problems
than it will solve.'
PBS said the letter was a 'private communication' between Mitchell and PBS
general managers.
'Pat was just laying out the facts about how the whole Wall $treet
Week situation evolved to the members, and
setting the record straight about the negotiations with Louis Rukeyser that
Maryland [Public Television] had been going through, and hoping for support for
the new series,' says a PBS spokesman.
