Categories: OLD Media Moves

CNBC's Ratigan's dream job is late night TV

Marketwatch media columnist Jon Friedman writes that CNBC “Fast Money” host Dylan Ratigan would really like to be a talk show host on late night television.

Friedman wrote, “Ratigan had no formal on-air training before he answered a house ad at Bloomberg, his previous employer, a decade ago. It invited employees to audition for the then-burgeoning Bloomberg TV operation.

“Too many people in TV news strive to look and sound just like everyone else. There is nothing smooth or polished about Ratigan, though he isn’t quite as wild and crazy as CNBC’s Jim Cramer. (Then again, who is?)

“Like Cramer, Ratigan has communications skills, charisma and a solid knowledge of the financial markets. Before Ratigan came to TV, he was an accomplished mergers and acquisitions reporter for the Bloomberg newswire. In the late 1990s, nobody at Bloomberg got harder-hitting stories or did more to put the company on an equal footing with the Wall Street Journal. (I know this because I sat next to Ratigan for a year when we were colleagues at Bloomberg News.)

“‘My real value-add is in the analysis, turning cocktail-party conversation into information to try to help viewers make more money.’ he said.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.