01h
•
Feature Story CHARLIE ROSE
• •••
The 'inimitable' Charlie
Rose hosts the interview show
Charlie Rose for PBS and
was previously a correspondent
for 60 Minutes II.
•••
He was born Charles Peete
Rose, Jr. on January 5, 1942, in
Henderson, North Carolina, son of
Margaret and Charles Peete Rose,
Sr., tobacco farmers who owned a
country store where he helped out
with the family business from age
seven.
•••
A high school basketball
star, Rose entered Duke
University planning on majoring
in pre-med, but instead an
internship in the office of
Democratic North Carolina Senator
B. Everett Jordan got him
interested in politics. Rose
graduated in 1964 with a
bachelor's degree in history. He
earned a Juris Doctor from the
Duke University School of Law in
1968. Rose also attended New York
University Stern School of
Business.
•••
After his then-wife, Mary
King was hired by the BBC in New
York, Rose handled some
assignments for the BBC on a
freelance basis. In 1972, while
continuing to work at Bankers
Trust, he landed a job as a
weekend reporter for WPIX-TV.
•••
His break came in 1974,
after Bill Moyers hired Rose as
managing editor for the PBS
series Bill Moyers'
International Report. In
1975, Moyers named Rose executive
producer of Bill Moyers'
Journal. Rose soon began
appearing on camera. "A
Conversation with Jimmy Carter,"
one installment of Moyers' series
U.S.A.: People and Politics, won
a 1976 Peabody Award. Rose worked
at several networks honing his
interview skills until KXAS-TV in
Dallas-Fort Worth hired him as
program manager and gave him the
late-night time slot that would
become the Charlie Rose show.
•• •
Rose worked for CBS News
(1984-1990) as the anchor of CBS
News Nightwatch, the network's
first late-night news broadcast.
The Nightwatch broadcast of
Rose's interview with Charles
Manson won an Emmy Award in 1987.
In 1990 Rose left CBS to serve as
anchor of Personalities, a
syndicated program produced by
Fox Broadcasting Company, but he
got out of his contract after six
weeks because of the
tabloid-style content of the
show.
•••
Charlie Rose
premiered on PBS station
Thirteen/WNET on 30 September
1991 and has been nationally
syndicated since January 1993. In
1994, Rose moved the show to a
studio owned by Bloomberg
Television, which allowed for
improved satellite
interviewing.
•••
Since 2003, Rose has sat
on the board of directors of
Citadel Broadcasting
Corporation.
•••
The PBS show 'Charlie
Rose' has over 4000 hours videos
on YouTube including hundreds of
full length episodes making it
one of the most accessible
television shows available.
Video
archive of past interviews has
also been added to the Chalie
Rose official website for free
viewing.
02
TimeLine
/
Charlie
Rose •
1942
-
Charlie
Rose was born Charles Peete Rose
Jr. on January 5, 1942, in
Henderson, North Carolina.
•• •The
Rose family lived near the
railroad tracks in Henderson, in
rooms above the general store
that Charles Rose Sr. owned and
managed and where, starting at
the age of seven, Charlie helped
out. At night, in the room that
he shared with his maternal
grandmother, he would read in bed
by flashlight. Filled with
curiosity about the world and
always eager for knowledge, he
enjoyed informational radio and
television programs.
•• •His
mother, Rose has characterized as
"a very strong person" who had a
"tremendous influence" on him and
recalled that his father had
uncommon intelligence and a
prodigious memory •
1959
-
After
graduating from high school,
where he starred on the
basketball team &endash; Rose
entered Duke University, in
Durham, North Carolina, as a
pre-med student.
•• •
One
summer, with the help of a family
friend, he secured an internship
in the office of North Carolina
senator B. Everett Jordan. By his
own account, his experiences as
an intern turned him into a
"political junkie," and upon
returning to college, he changed
his area of concentration to
history. •
1964
-
Graduated
with an A.B. degree from Duke
University and subsequently
entered said university's School
of Law. •
1968
- Received a J.D. degree
from Duke University School of
Law, but
soon realized that the practice
of law held little interest for
him. As he explained to Scott
Widener for the Chicago Tribune,
"I was in some firm watching a
lawyer advise a client one day,
and it dawned on me that I was
much more interested in the
client than the lawyer. The
client was the one trying to
build something.
•• •"
Inspired by the idea of "building
something" as an entrepreneur, he
started taking classes at the New
York University Graduate School
of Business and by then had moved
to New York City. •
1968
- He
ccepted a job at Bankers Trust.
But business, too, failed to
engage his imagination fully. As
he once commented, "To know me is
to know that [the business
world] was not the right
place for me." •
1968
-
Rose
married Mary Rose (née
King). Mary is the sister-in-law
of Morgan Stanley CEO John J.
Mack. •
1968
-
Through
his wife, who was doing research
for the CBS television show 60
Minutes, Rose became friendly
with people employed in
broadcasting, and he developed
what soon became a passionate
interest in the broadcast media.
After his wife was hired by the
BBC (in the United States), he
handled some assignments for the
BBC on a freelance basis. •
1972
- In
1972, while continuing to work at
Bankers Trust, he landed a job as
a weekend reporter for WPIX-TV,
in New York City, but he found
that occupation less than
satisfying, primarily because it
required him to limit his airtime
reports or interviews to no more
than a few
minutes. •
1972-1973
-
During
his approximately one-year stint
at WPIX, Rose tried several times
without success to contact Bill
Moyers for an interview. •
1974
-
Then,
in 1974, Moyers telephoned Rose,
after Rose's wife spoke to Moyers
about him at a social gathering.
At their first meeting, Rose once
told Joyce Saenz Harris, he and
Moyers felt an "instant
chemistry," and within weeks
Charlie Rose entered television
journalism full-time, when he
became the managing editor of the
PBS series Bill Moyers'
International Report. •
1975
- In
1975 Moyers named him the
executive producer of Bill
Moyers' Journal, a PBS
documentary and conversation
series. Although, by his own
account, Rose had "no great
desire to be on camera," in the
following year he became the
correspondent for U.S.A.: People
and Politics, Moyers's new weekly
PBS political magazine
series.
•• •
"A
Conversation with Jimmy Carter,"
one installment of Bill
Moyers' Journal, won a 1976
Peabody Award. •
1976
-
After
Moyers left public television to
work for CBS, Rose accepted a
Washington, D.C.-based job as a
political correspondent for NBC
News. In the belief that he
lacked sufficient training to do
a proper job and that he should
"get the maximum amount of on-air
experience," as he put it, he
seized opportunities to host
interview shows. He first
appeared as a guest host on
Panorama, on WTTG-TV, in
Washington, D.C. •
1978
- In
1978, after leaving NBC, he
served as a co-host with
AM/Chicago, on WLS-TV. A year
later Blake Byrne, the general
manager of KXAS-TV in Dallas-Fort
Worth, hired him as program
manager, and although, as Byrne
has recalled, he "had no budget
to pay [Rose] to do a
talk show," he also offered him a
time slot for what became The
Charlie Rose Show. •
1979
- "It
was where I sort of came of age
as a broadcaster," Rose has said
of his first eponymous show.
"Because all the responsibility
was on me. I was working alone; I
wasn't co-hosting. I produced the
show, found the guests,
researched the show. It was an
extraordinary time for me." In
1981, with the goal (which he
achieved) of securing national
syndication, Rose moved The
Charlie Rose Show to Washington,
D.C., where, for the next two
years or so, it was broadcast on
the NBC-owned station WRC-TV.
Concurrently, he hosted another,
weekly interview show for
WRC-TV. •
1980
-
Rose's
twelve-year marriage to Mary Rose
(née King) ended in
divorce. Mary is the
sister-in-law of Morgan Stanley
CEO John J. Mack. •
1983
- At
the end of 1983, Van Gordon
Sauter, the president of CBS's
news division, hired Rose to
anchor Nightwatch, an
interview program that was taped
during the day and was broadcast
five times a week between 2:00
A.M. and 6:00 A.M. •
1984-1990
- Rose
anchored Nightwatch, the CBS
television network's late-night
interview series, and won for
himself what some observers have
described as a cult following for
the in-depth conversations that
have since earned him a
reputation as "the best
interviewer around today," in the
words of Marvin Kitman. "[The
Charlie Rose Show] is the
purest extension of my skills as
an interviewer," Rose told Joyce
Saenz Harris, who interviewed him
for the Dallas Morning News (May
2, 1993). "Whatever craft there
is, that's what it's about:
stripping away all the barriers
to good conversation. I'm looking
for people to be at their best,
their most real. If I can do
that, it makes for telling
television."
•• •
Rose has
recalled having "a wonderful
time" during his six-and-a-half
years as the Nightwatch host. He
told one reporter, "I would not
be [in my current
position] today without
Nightwatch. [The
Charlie Rose Show] is a
direct descendant of
Nightwatch, because it's
the same kind of guest list."
Like that of Charlie Rose,
the Nightwatch guest list
was not confined to the world's
movers and shakers. Among the
other people whose activities or
histories caught Rose's interest
was the convicted murderer
Charles Manson, with whom he
talked for three hours.
•• •
"At the
beginning, Manson was really
crazy... ," Jessica Matthews, a
friend of Rose's, told Elise
O'Shaughnessy. "But Charlie found
a level on which to engage Manson
and then finally brought him down
to a more sane plane." •
1987
- Emmy
Award: The Nightwatch
broadcast of Rose's interview
with Manson won an Emmy
Award. •
1990
- In
1990 Rose left CBS to serve as
anchor of Personalities, a
syndicated program produced by
Twentieth-Century Fox Television.
Chagrined to find himself
associated with what proved to be
a tabloid-type news show, he
asked to be released from his
contract after just six weeks
(and, in doing so, turned his
back on a contract salary said to
have been set at more than $1
million).
• •
About ten
months later, acting on a
friend's suggestion, he
approached Bill Baker, the
president and chief executive
officer of the PBS-affiliated
station Thirteen/WNET-TV, in New
York City, with a proposal for a
new interview show. "My vision
was that talking heads done well
can be engaging television and
can attract an audience," he
recalled to Scott Widener. "Bill
Baker . . . saw merit in that
vision, and I was on the air
within a month after pitching the
idea." •
1991
-
The
Charlie Rose Show premiered
on Thirteen/WNET on September 30,
1991. During nine months in 1992,
it also aired (a day later) on
the Learning Channel, with ten
minutes edited out to allow time
for advertisements.
Funding
for the show is primarily
provided by donations from
various corporations and
charitable
foundations.
• •
Syndicated
nationally since January 1993, it
currently airs on 215 PBS
affiliate stations. The show is
owned by Charlie Rose Inc., a
corporation that Rose formed in
1991 with the aim of producing
Charlie Rose and other
programs.
• •
Rose
interviews well-known thinkers,
writers, politicians, athletes,
entertainers, businessmen,
leaders, scientists, and other
newsmakers. Guests have ranged
from international statesmen Tony
Blair and Nicholas Sarkozy to
Nobel laureates Muhammad Yunus
and Harold Pinter to leaders in
business like Warren Buffett and
Ted Turner. In the artistic
arena, Rose's guests range from
actors George Clooney, and Kate
Winslet, to musicians Paul Simon
and Neil Young. His program
serves as a window on cultural
areas rarely seen on TV like
architecture, painting,
photography and classical
music.
• •
Rose
sits with his guests in the
stillness of his studio, across
his trademark round, oak-hewn
table and silhouetted against
black background. A new one-hour
episode airs nearly every
weeknight. According to its
website, only Rose and his guests
are allowed in the studio during
taping. This is accomplished by
the use of robotic cameras. The
Show broadcasts from the
Bloomberg Building in New York
City. •
1993
- From 1993 until 2005, Rose's
companion was socialite and
city-planning advocate Amanda
Burden, a stepdaughter of CBS
founder William S. Paley. •
1994
- In
1994, faced with the probable
loss of his studio, which was
maintained by the then
financially troubled WNET, he
moved the show to a studio owned
by Bloomberg Television News in a
building on New York City's Park
Avenue. (He also gained access to
the fifty news bureaus maintained
by Bloomberg worldwide and to
Bloomberg television studios in
Washington, Tokyo, and London,
and he was able to interview
guests via Bloomberg
satellites.)
•• •
Telecast
Monday through Friday from 11:00
P.M. to midnight (the show is
picked up by some stations a
half-hour later), Rose and his
guest (or guests) sit across from
one another at a round wooden
table. "The key to the show is
open space on the table's
[near] perimeter," Phil
Patton observed in Esquire
(February 1993), "inviting the
viewer to listen in. . . Afloat
in a black background, Charlie's
table has become an island where
savvy channel surfers put ashore
each weeknight."
•• •
Charlie
Rose music theme was specifically
composed for the series by David
Lowe & David Schapiro in
Brooklyn, NY and is not available
in any format. •
1993
- From 1993 until 2005, his
companion was socialite and
city-planning advocate Amanda
Burden, a stepdaughter of CBS
founder William S. Paley.
•
2001
- In
the June 24, 2001, New York Times
Magazine, Fox News Channel
executive Roger Ailes claimed to
have received Rose's word that he
would not be asked political
questions during his interview.
The Charlie Rose Show's executive
producer, Yvette Vega, responded
that she was unaware of any such
deal. •
2002
-
Charlie
Rose hosted the 2002 Coca-Cola
Company shareholders meeting.
"Few companies are able to
connect as completely with
consumers in the way that
Coca-Cola is," he proclaimed from
the stage. "It is a privilege to
be associated with [The
Coca-Cola family] ... This is
the business of Coca-Cola: being
part of a family, being
worldwide, doing well and doing
good at the same time."
•• •
Outside,
the Teamsters held a protest,
alleging that Coca-Cola was
complicit in the murder of eight
union leaders at bottling plants
in Colombia, a story which has
received little coverage in the
US media. Afterward, Coca-Cola
agreed to become what Rose called
"a leading underwriter" of The
Charlie Rose Show, paying "six or
possibly seven figures."
•• •
Even the
Charlie Rose mugs used on his PBS
show feature a Coca-Cola logo on
one side. Although CBS News
policy bars correspondents from
doing commercials and product
endorsements, the Washington Post
reported CBS was "comfortable"
with Rose's actions. Rose insists
he "would never do a story on 60
Minutes II about anybody who
underwrites my PBS show." •
2006
- On
March 29, 2006, after
experiencing shortness of breath
in Syria
to
interview President
Assad,
Rose was flown to Paris and
underwent surgery for mitral
valve repair in the
Georges-Pompidou European
Hospital. His surgery was
performed under the supervision
of Dr. Alain Carpentier, a
pioneer of the procedure. Rose
returned to the air on June 12,
2006, with Bill Moyers and Yvette
Vega (the show's executive
producer), to discuss his surgery
and recuperation. •
2007
- Video archive of past
interviews has been added to the
Chalie Rose official website for
free viewing.
•• •
In
a partnership with Google, nearly
4000 hours of video has been
added to YouTube featuring
complete hour-long episodes as
they originally aired. •
2009
- On
August 1, 2009, the New York
Times reported that Rose brokered
a deal between MSNBC and Fox News
executives to censor the content
of Keith Olbermann and Bill
O'Reilly's news programs because
it was hurting their unrelated
businesses.
•• •
Rose had
previously told Amy Goodman, " I
promise you, CBS News and ABC
News and NBC News are not
influenced by the corporations
that may own those companies.
Since I know one of them very
well and worked for one of
them."
•• •
Rose has
been criticized for his
aggressive style of interviewing,
in which he often interrupts his
guests while they try to answer
his questions. Journalist Mike
Wallace told the New York Times
that, watching the show, "I want
to shout at the screen, 'Shut up,
Charlie!'"
•• •
Actor-director
Christopher Guest, frustrated
with Rose's questioning during an
interview on the show, exclaimed,
"Wow, this is like McCarthy," a
reference to the 1954 U.S. Senate
hearings on Communism. Rose has
admitted that he interrupts too
often, and was once told by a
street vendor in New York,
"Sometimes you need to let the
guests talk."
•• •
Rose rents
a townhouse in Manhattan that, by
his own admission, is filled with
an "embarrassing amount" of
electronic equipment. On
weekends, when not enjoying the
cultural life of New York City or
preparing for his show, he
travels to North Carolina or the
upstate New York farm of a
friend; during the long drives to
his destinations, he listens to
books on
audiocassettes.
03.
Special
Feature
/
Charlie
Rose, the inimitabale
Host.
•••
Nathan
Southern wrote for All Movie
Guide that from the beginning of
his broadcasting career, the
inimitable, Emmy Award-winning
broadcast journalist Charlie Rose
cultivated and sustained a
reputation as one of America's
foremost intellectually oriented
talk show interviewers.
••The
Henderson, NC, native received
his formal education at Duke
University, with an AB in history
and a JD from the School of
Law.
•••His
eponymous talk series debuted on
PBS in 1992; it employed a unique
style and venue that found him
perched in a chair to one side of
a round wooden table.
•••Celebrity
guests (who spanned the fields of
arts, entertainment, sports,
politics, and current events per
se) sat across from him, one at a
time, and responded to an array
of incisive, cerebral questions
about their lives, careers,
worldviews, and hopes for the
future.
•••In
terms of interviewing style, Rose
utilized an approach commonly
termed "disarming" for its
directness and lack of pretense
and manipulation, but it was
nevertheless softened by a
southern warmth and graciousness
that set him apart from the pack,
which gave him a broad following.
In addition to the program, Rose
launched a documentary series
called Great Masters that
examined the lives and works of
various artists.
•••
"Charlie brings a Southern
civility to the most intelligent
tête-à-têtes
on TV. His table has become an
island where savvy
channel-surfers put ashore each
weeknight -- an essential gloss
on the media, politics, sports
and cultures," writes
Esquire.
•
04
ByLines:TVI
Bylines
/There
have been hundreds of guests on
the Charlie Rose show from the
world of the arts, politics,
broadcasting and sports.
Guest
hosts have
included:
•••
Chris
Anderson, the late William F.
Buckley Jr., Michael Ignatieff,
David Foster Wallace, Michael
Eisner, Richard Holbrooke, Brian
Grazer, Björk, Jerry
Seinfeld, Nicholas Kristof, Dave
Matthews, Bill Moyers, Barack
Obama, Conan O'Brien, Sarah Palin
David Remnick, Malcolm Gladwell,
Brian Ross,
Salman
Rushdie, Bruce
Springsteen,
Peter
Travers, Barbara Walters, Judy
Woodruff, Jimmy Wales,
Rick
Wagoner -
and some more.
•••
Andrew
Lloyd Webber, Sigourney Weaver,
Kathleen Turner, Helen Thomas,
Lawrence Summers (14
appearances), Meryl Streep, Rod
Stewart, Susan Sontag, Kevin
Spacey, Gerry Spence, Eliot
Spitzer, Stephen Sondheim, Tavis
Smiley, Kevin Smith, Martin
Sheen, Tom Selleck, Gerhard
Schroeder, Cheryl Saban, Morley
Safer, Esa-Pekka Solonen, Pierre
Salinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Meg
Ryan, Winona Ryder, Mickey
Rourke, Andy Rooney, Tim Russert,
Julia Roberts, Joan Rivers, Anne
Rice, Natasha Richardson, Carl
Reiner, Rob Reiner, Martha
Raddaz, Bonnie Raitt, Sydney
Pollack, Luciano Pavarotti, Jane
Pauley, Itzhak Perlman, Richard
Parsons, Larry Page, Bill
O'Reilley, Ehud Olmert, Benjamin
Netanyahu, Queen Noor of Jordan,
Carroll O'Connor, Sandra Day
O'Connor, John Cardinal O'Connor,
Paul Newman, Gavin Newsom, Bob
Newhart, Nick Nolte, Janet
Napolitano, Willie Nelson, Rupert
Murdoch, Anne-Sophie Mutter,
Pervez Musharraf, Hosni Musbarak,
Adm. Michael Mullen, Les Moonves,
Mary Tyler Moore, Jeanne Moreau,
Michael Moore, Andrea Mitchell,
Joni Mitchell, Arthur Miller,
Zubin Metha, John McEnroe, Mary
Matalin, Paul McCartney, John
McCain, Marcel Marceau, Norman
Mailer, George Lucas, Lyle
Lovett, Yo-Yo Ma, Sophia Loren,
Jerry Lewis, Jay Leno, Karl
Lagerfeld, Diana Krall, Alsion
Krauss, Ted Koppel, Andrea
Koppel, Henry Kissinger, Eartha
Kitt, Caroline Kennedy, Magic
Johnson, Angeline Jolie, Van
Johnson, Qunincy Jones, Peter
Jennings, Billy Joel, Steve Jobs,
Lee Iacocca, Julio Iglesias,
Isabelle Huppert, Angelica
Huston, Bob Hope, Dolores Hope,
Ron Howard, Dustin Hofman,
Bernard Henri-Levi, Goldie Hawn,
Selma Hayek, Tom Hayden, Tenzin
Gyatso (Dalai Lama), Gene
Hackman, John Grisham, Alan
Greenspan, Rudy Giuliani, Hubert
de Givenchy, Allen Ginsberg,
Whoopi Goldberg, Mel
Gibson,Timothy Geithner, Diane
Von Furstenberg, Thomas L.
Freedman, Vincente Fox, Larry
Flynt, Jane Fonda, Steve Forbes,
Milos Forman, Renee Fleming,
Calista Flockhart, Peter Falk,
Nora Ephron, Susan Estrich, Rahm
Emanuel, Clint Eastwood, Sam
Donaldson, Placido Domongo, Phil
Donahue, Kirk Douglas, Michael
Douglas, Robert Downey, Hugh
Downs, Maureen Dowd, Danny De
Vito, Leonardo DiCaprio,
Catherine Deneuve, Brian Dennehy,
Laura Dern, Johnny Depp, Matt
Damon, Clive Davis, Gray Davis,
Oscar de La Renta, Robert De
Niro, Penelope Cruz, Cindy
Crawford, Walter Cronkite, Tom
Cruise, Alistair Cooke, Anderson
Cooper, Francis Ford Cooppola,
Sofia Coppola, Glenn Close, Bill
Clinton, Hillary Clinton, James
Coburn, Dick Cavett, Michael
Chertoff, Cher, Jacque Chirac,
Tom Clancy, Julia Child, Dick
Cavett, Ahmed Chalabi, Tung
Chee-Hwa, Steve Case, Jimmy
Carter, Carol Burnett, George
Bush, Nicolas Cage, Sid Ceasar,
Jerry Bruckheimer, Dave Brubeck,
Pat Buchanan, Benazir Bhutto,
Sandra Bullocks, Warren Buffett,
Tom Brokaw, David Brooks, Mel
Brooks, Willie Brown, Richard
Branson, Adrien Brody, Eli Broad,
Ed Bradley, Steven Bochco, Peter
Bogdanovich, Joe Biden, Tony
Blair, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jeff
Bezos, Yossi Belin, Harry
Belafonte, Toni Bennett, Annette
Bening, Mikhail Baryshnikov,
Warren Beatty, Wendy Beckett,
Peter Barnt, Drew Barrymore, Alec
Baldwin, Steve Ballmer, Tariq
Aziz, Lauren Bacall, Paul Anka,
Steve Allen, Robert Altman,
Edward Albee, Madeleine Albright,
Ben Affleck, Andree Agassi.
