Rukeyser’s illness ends ‘Wall Street’

Veteran financial journalist Louis Rukeyser, who has been off television for a year due to cancer, has asked CNBC to pull the plug on his long-running Friday-night business news show.

CNBC said that “Louis Rukeyser’s Wall Street,” which has been airing with Consuelo Mack as substitute host, will cease production by the end of the year.

Rukeyser, 71, had announced earlier this year that he had cancer in his lower back and said Friday that complications had developed.

“I can no longer predict when I will be ready to rejoin you here,” Rukeyser said in a statement posted on his website.

Rukeyser logged 32 years on the show, which started long before business news became popular. Most of that time it was on PBS, before the network fired him in 2002 in an attempt to update its format.