Making It Her Business on PBS

Linda O’Bryon has steered public television’s “Nightly Business Report” since its inception at Miami public station WPBR. Now, after 10 years on the air as a national program, the program has a staff of 40 based in Miami, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, and O’Bryon is senior vice president and general manager of the station division that produces the program. In Los Angeles recently to conduct a seminar on business issues, O’Bryon discussed the show and her career with free-lance writer Sharon Bernstein.

How did the “Nightly Business Report” get started?

We started as a local program in South Florida, as a 15-minute summary of business news geared toward the Southern Florida market. We kind of wondered how we’d ever fill 15 minutes. Now we wonder how we get it all into 30 minutes.

Now you’re anchored out of both New York and Florida. How does that work?

It actually gives us broader news-gathering resources because we’re able to bring in guests right onto the New York set or have one of our New York correspondents there if there’s a breaking story, so it gives us more access. We’re right on Wall Street next to the American Stock Exchange.

Could you also say the opposite, that being in Miami gives you a broader perspective?

In many ways, there are distinct advantages to being in Miami. Miami has a strategic position as an international market. A lot of Latin American interests are there, which is good for us in terms of coverage. We have a lot of people coming in that we’re able to interview, so I think it has been an advantage. I think it also gives us perspective and viewpoints that we might not otherwise have had if we were solely in the Northeast.

What is your image of what the program should be and what it should be doing?

I think the program has to be a distinct mix of news as well as analysis, with some features mixed. Another philosophy in terms of television has been that if you present business news with strong visuals and strong production elements, you could make it interesting as well as informative.

What gives you the visual elements? Your magazine-style pieces and features?

Those and the fact that we have the combination of (video) news-gathering as well as graphics.

Who is your audience?

In our studies we have seen that the demographics are what you would expect--highly educated, with a large percentage of professionals and managers, people who are in business and investors. But the man who carried my bags up to the hotel said, “I watch your program every night.” So you get people from all walks of life.

There really wasn’t much business news on television when you started.

At that time there was this real negative feeling among broadcasters about business news. There was a lot of interest in consumer news, but not in looking at (issues) from a business perspective, not in looking at what corporate America was doing and the challenges that the economy faced. I really feel that the newspapers were way ahead of television on this.

What would the average person get out of the show?

I think a sense of what the major issues are, what’s happening in the markets, domestic and global, what’s happening in Washington, and trying to interpret for the average person what that means. We’ve also placed a greater emphasis in recent years on personal finance.

Tell me about yourself personally. Where do you come from?

I’m from Washington, D.C., originally. I grew up there and then I went to the University of Miami for undergraduate work and majored in journalism and economics. My first job was in Salt Lake City as a television reporter.

What do you like to do when you’re not working?

I like to ski, though in Florida I don’t get to do too much of that. I play tennis. I have a 13-year old daughter, so we do a lot of things together. I try to keep as active as I can. I really am a firm believer in aerobics and all of those sorts of things.

What’s your take on the economy? What do we need?

I think we need to get past the 1992 election. I think we really are in a difficult period here because you have the political and economic viewpoints clashing. And things are going to be done unfortunately for political reasons and not for economic reasons. This recess is really not as deep as the one we had in ‘81-82 in terms of unemployment, but consumer psychology is so negative. And I think there’s a real danger that people running for office are going to say that we need to have a quick fix.

“Nightly Business Report” airs weeknights at 6 on KCET and 6:30 on KOCE and KPBS.