Nightly Business Report co-anchor Kangas plans to retire at end of 2009

Paul Kangas, a co-anchor on the PBS show “Nightly Business Report,” plans to retire at the end of the year after three decades in the spot.

The show has quietly begun searching for a successor.

Kangas has been stationed at the show’s Miami headquarters since it began in 1979, making him the longest-running business news anchor in the industry. He has co-anchored the show with New York-based Susie Gharib for the last 12 years.

A former stockbroker, Kangas joined Nightly Business Report when it began as a local program on Miami’s public television station, WPBT2, in 1979.

In addition to delivering the daily market summaries, Kangas conducts each Friday the “Market Monitor” interview with noted market observers. He is known for his fast-paced delivery, sharp wit and encyclopedic knowledge of the financial markets.

In 2003, Kangas’ signature segment, “Stocks in the News,” won a Financial Writers and Editors Award from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University as “best broadcast feature or series useful to investors.”

The media has noticed and praised Kangas for his expertise. The Detroit Free Press has dubbed him “the Walter Cronkite of business broadcasting” and the Village Voice has noted that Kangas is “not content to merely rattle off stocks and prices.” Analysis is a key part of his presentation. Utilizing his extensive contacts on Wall Street, he has earned a reputation for ferreting out the hidden reasons behind stock moves. This prompted TV Guide to praise his “fine stock market coverage” and the Miami Review to comment: “How would brokers answer their clients’ questions about the market without watching Paul Kangas’ summaries?”

Kangas began his career in business broadcasting at the Miami CBS Radio affiliate, WINZ. He was actually a stock broker at the time, but his biggest client owned the station and asked Kangas to do a stock market wrap-up segment. He gave up his work in the stock market when he joined NBR in 1979.

Kangas also previously wrote a syndicated weekly column in Cox Newspapers.