Host at CBC Business News
Hosting the Business News every night was the highlight of my 43-year broadcasting career. Like many things in life, I stumbled into it. In the early 1990s I was working for Venture as a freelance field reporter. The CBC was starting a new service, Newsworld International, and they asked me if I would like to be their business reporter. The answer was yes. Soon I was working for the new network business program as a field reporter and when the regular anchor left, they asked me to take over. It was a great 10 years, doing three or four interviews a day on business and economics, areas I loved to cover.
All the people I worked with were younger than I and liked it that way. They did things I was trained not to do. The one thing I insisted on was keeping things simple. I wouldn’t allow any business jargon, since I wasn’t doing this program for people in the business world but people in the real world. Many of them wanted facts, figures and opinions – the guests, not mine- on where the economy and markets were going. I always stayed away from inserting my own opinions and never made predictions.
The best part of hosting the program was the people we interviewed every night. My technique was to ask simple questions and not let the guest slip into the comfortable jargon that experts often use.
The program evolved over time and finally came to an end. I retired from broadcasting a year or so afterwards.
