Keene tries to talk to smart people

John Nyaradi of Wall Street Selector interviews Bloomberg News’ Tom Keene on his job and his Bloomberg Television shows.

Here is an excerpt:

John Nyaradi:   Let’s talk a little bit about your work at Bloomberg, you have done some great things there – you are founder of the chart of the day on Bloomberg Professional, can you talk just a little about that, what its about?

Tom Keene:  Oh, years ago, Matt Winkler, our editor-in-chief, came to me and asked me that to put together a chart of the day. So I worked it up with my limited journalistic skills and, to be honest, I don’t remember what the first chart was, but we put it out about 1 pm and I got a phone call from the head of prop trading for JP Morgan, maybe 3 pm the same day, and she said, can we use it in our meetings this afternoon. So I said, by all means, and really with that we were off to the races.

John Nyaradi:   Let’s talk about your two shows. I like Bloomberg a lot, I go there all the time.  Let’s talk about “Surveillance Midday” on the television side and “Bloomberg Surveillance” on the radio side.

Tom Keene:  Well, they are very different. I think “Bloomberg Surveillance” is wake up in the morning, where are the markets, talk to smart people, and “Surveillance Midday” is designed to be that 12 noon interlude in the market where – hey, here is where the markets are and we again try to talk to smart people. But the hallmark of my work is a belief that the audience is smarter than the media thinks. Our audiences are global Wall Street and the informed non-Wall Street, and they’re all very, very smart about investing. They read everything, they study everything, they’re  in the market, and our other audience is what I call the curious and informed professionals. And the one thing that all three groups have in common is they are smart, and what we do is, if we get a little esoteric like sterilized QE, we will define that, we will explain what we are talking about, but we really try in both shows not to talk down to the audience. We just assume they are smart, they are in the game, they are informed so we can get to the important distinctions and the better questions quickly.

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