Bringing back “Wall Street Week”

Anthony Scaramucci doesn’t intend to copy Louis Rukeyser, who hosted the iconic “Wall Street Week” show on public television from 1970 to 2005.

But Scaramucci, who’s bringing back the show in April as its host, says the new “Wall Street Week” will borrow some of the same themes and strategies that made the original show — and Rukeyser — successful.

“We want this to be objective,” said Scaramucci in a interview with Talking Biz News on Tuesday. “We are looking for the right answer. And typical of what Lou did, it is OK not to have the right answer. He used to applaud people when they said, ‘I don’t have the right answer.'”

He later added, “The entire universe is in information overload. But if I had to describe Lou Rukeyser and ‘Wall Street Week,’ it was in one word — insight. What Lou did, and what we hope to do, is give you information and provide insight about what to do.”

The new show will debut on April 19 and will air for one half-hour every Sunday morning on local television stations in major U.S. markets such as New York City, Washington D.C., Chicago and San Francisco. It will also be streamed on WallStreetWeek.com. Scaramucci’s SkyBridge Capital, an investment firm, acquired the rights to the show a year ago from Maryland Public Television, and it has hired CNBC employees to produce the new show.

Whereas Rukeyser’s background was in journalism, Scaramucci is a Wall Street insider.

Prior to founding SkyBridge, Scaramucci co-founded Oscar Capital Management, an investment partnership and managed accounts business which was sold to Neuberger Berman LLC in 2001.  Upon Neuberger Berman’s sale to Lehman Brothers in 2003, he served as a managing director in its investment management division.  From 1989 to 1996, Scaramucci was at Goldman Sachs & Co., where in 1993 he became a vice president in private wealth management.

“The negative is I am not a trained business journalist,” said Scaramucci. “I don’t think I am going to start out as the Mike Wallace of financial journalism. But the positive is that because I do this for a living, I know what to look for. I know when the BS detector or the disingenuous detector goes off.”

Scaramucci has appeared regularly in the past decade on both CNBC and Fox Business Network and has watched how those networks operate. “The host’s job , if done well, is that you’re not the story. The guest is the story,” he said. “Maria Bartiromo never wants to be story. Her job is to do the homework. and she comes incredibly prepared and asking he right questions. There are other business journalists that don’t do that. They are phoning it in.”

And he said “Wall Street Week” will properly disclose anytime an investment is mentioned that is in the SkyBridge portfolio. The show, he emphasized, is not about selling SkyBridge products. He plans to invite Wall Street competitors on the show.

“This is about raising the profile and awareness and improving financial literacy,” said Scaramucci. “This is not about marketing products. If someone is making a point about something, and it happens to be in our portfolio, we’ll be able to make sure it is fully disclosed.”

However, he noted that the show will be different than other business news shows on television by focusing more on long-term trends instead of specific stocks.

“I want this to be about global forces, the future, how the world is going to look in 2020,” said Scaramucci. “What are the business journalists missing about the nano technological evolution because they’re focusing on the day-to-day? How are the current innovations in biotechnology going to affect health care costs in the next decade?

“I want it to be content enriched. This is going to be thematic, and it’s going to be less stock structured.”