How “Nightly Business Report” defined TV biz news

Linda O’Bryon, one of the original anchors of “Nightly Business Report,” writes for Current about how it shaped business news coverage on television.

The show is ending Dec. 27 after 40 years.

O’Bryon writes, “In those early days, we broke all the television rules to create a program that experts outside of public broadcasting said would not work. Business news was ‘too dull for television,’ they said. The naysayers also reminded us that the nation already had The Wall Street Journal. And, they asked, how could anyone produce a business news program based in Miami anyway?

“Our group of dedicated staff members set out to prove them wrong. And we did. One reporter later would call NBR ‘the little engine that could.’

“The notion of a business news program delivering stock quotes, business news and analysis just two and a half-hours after the closing market bell resonated with millions of viewers.”

Read more here.

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.