Charlie Rose

Charlie Rose is the elegant, handsome, fiercely intelligent and inquisitive host of the self-titled Charlie Rose (1991).

Rose was born Charles Peete Rose, Jr. on January 5, 1942 in Henderson, North Carolina, the only child of Margaret (Frazier) and Charles Peete Rose, Sr., tobacco farmers. The Rose family lived near the railroad tracks in Henderson, in rooms above the general store that his parents owned and managed, and where Charlie helped out. After graduating from high school, where he starred on the basketball team, Rose entered Duke University as a pre-med student. His extra-curricular activities included working with children in a Head Start program. One summer, he secured an internship in the office of North Carolina senator B. Everett Jordan. According to him, his experiences as an intern turned him into a "political junkie" and, upon returning to college, he changed his major to history. After receiving an A.B. degree in 1964, he entered the Duke University School of Law but, sometime before or shortly after earning a J.D. degree in 1968, he realised that the practice of law held little interest for him. Inspired by the idea of "building something" as an entrepreneur, he started taking classes at the New York University Graduate School of Business (he had moved to New York City in 1968) and accepted a job at Bankers Trust. Through his wife, who was doing research for the CBS television show 60 Minutes (1968), 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. In 1972, while continuing to work at Bankers Trust, he landed a job as a weekend reporter for WPIX-TV, in New York City. During his approximately one-year stint at WPIX, Rose tried several times, without success, to contact Bill Moyers for an interview.

In 1974, Moyers telephoned Rose, after Rose's wife spoke to Moyers about him at a social gathering. At their first meeting, he and Moyers felt an "instant chemistry" and, within weeks, he began working as the managing editor of the PBS series "Bill Moyers' International Report"). (Moyers has said that Rose served as his "alter ego" as well at that time.) In 1975, Moyers named him the executive producer of Bill Moyers' Journal (1972), 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 that series, won a 1976 Peabody Award. Later in 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. 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 programme manager and, although the station had no budget to pay Rose to do a talk show, he also offered him a time slot for what became Charlie Rose (1991).

In 1981, with the goal of securing national syndication, Rose moved Charlie Rose (1991) to Washington, D.C. where, for the next two years or so, it was broadcast on the NBC-owned station WRC-TV. At the same time, he hosted another weekly interview show for WRC-TV. At the end of 1983, CBS hired Rose to anchor CBS News Roundup (1982), 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. Rose has recalled having "a wonderful time" during his six-and-a-half years as the CBS News Nightwatch host. Like that of Charlie Rose, the CBS News 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. The CBS News Nightwatch broadcast of Rose's interview with Manson won an Emmy Award in 1987.

In 1990, Rose left CBS to serve as anchor of "Personalities", a syndicated programme produced by Fox Television. Angry to find himself hosting a tabloid-like news show, he broke his contract after just six weeks. About ten months later, he approached PBS-affiliated station Thirteen/WNET-TV in New York City, with a proposal for a new interview show. Charlie Rose premiered on Thirteen/WNET on September 30, 1991. During nine months in 1992, it also on the Learning Channel. Syndicated nationally since January 1993, it airs on 215 PBS affiliate stations. The show's premise is simple; engage the best politicians, thinkers, personalities, celebrities, sports figures, artists, writers and scientists in one-on-one conversation without any gimmicks and irritating commercial breaks. The show's simple black background and round oak table serve to do just that, along with Rose's intelligent interviewing style and ability to ask pertinent questions, forcing the essence of the personalities to come out.

Rose has interviewed the likes of President Nelson Mandela, President Bill Clinton, Salman Rushdie, Madonna, Bono of U2, Bill Gates, Meryl Streep, Warren Beatty and countless others. According to a conversation he had with Chuck D of Public Enemy fame, he has conducted over 100,000 interviews. Divorced, Rose splits his time between a rented townhouse in Manhattan (that, according to him, is filled with an "embarrassing amount" of electronic equipment) and Bellport, Long Island. On weekends, when not enjoying the rich, cultural life of New York City or preparing for his show, he travels to his farm near Oxford, North Carolina or to the upstate New York farm of a friend.