This post is the result of a recent conversation I had with Kevin O’Leary about why he decided to leave BNN and what his plans are on the new business show with Amanda Lang. As he says below, after Lang decided to leave BNN to go to the CBC, O’Leary had no intention of joining.
But all of that changed after a breakfast meeting he had with Richard Stursberg. This is how O’Leary described the meeting and what convinced him to join the CBC.
When Amanda made her move to the CBC, she called me the night before and said ‘I’m going to move,’ and I said ‘Good luck to you.’ We’d worked together for six years and had a fantastic relationship because, you know, she views the world from, well, you’ve got to remember she’s Otto Lang’s daughter – a famous liberal.
I think the balance is to bring somebody that can bring her back to the side of light, which is the right. She needs me badly to help her with that. Because left alone she’d be dangerous to Canadians watching. So I felt the responsibility of the nation on me, to keep her in check, shall we say. So that was one compelling reason.
But I was concerned we wouldn’t be allowed – in the context of the CBC’s overall, what I call, left-wing agenda – to be what I am, which is a right-wing voice of reason. Richard [Stursberg] made it clear to me that that was not the case, I signed on that morning.
I went to that breakfast with no intention of going to the CBC.
I could see he was about to make material change. There’s no question. Because prior to that I had no intention of moving over. To me the CBC was not an unbiased view, it tended to have a way too left-wing taint to it in my view. I always looked to the CBC to give me the left side of the story not the centrist. And after meeting with Richard it was clear to me that he was going to change all that.
He wanted both views, he didn’t care if there was a conflict in it, he just wanted them both. And I was going to the part of what I call the right wing voice of reason. Now I’m very happy to take that position, I personally think of myself as slightly right of Attila the Hun, and I think we need a lot more Kevin O’Leary’s at the CBC to balance off what traditionally has been a way too complacent view of the world.
Even though CBC is steeped in history and has been extremely successful in the areas of news making and documentary reporting, it still has a responsibility in my view to report both sides of the story, from the left, from the right, so that the individual that watches the content can make up their own mind…
I think we have too much government, we’re over-taxed, we have to change that. We have to look at the role of the individual in this country. We don’t need public medecine. We need a private opportunity as well. We need less of everything the government brings to the table. And we don’t tell that story on the CBC and I’m going to start telling it now.
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Kevin is my personal hero. A guy who will always stand up for what’s right, as opposed to wrong (= left)!
I like the guy.. but all this ‘voice of reason’ stuff makes him seem just a bit deluded.. he wants it to be acknowledged that there can be more than one perspective, yet he seems convinced that only his can be the right one.
Looking forward to it, though.. I do like that he brings a perspective that isn’t easily found at the cbc.
I don’t quite understand why Kevin O’Leary is going to be talking about politics on his business show.
CBC has always presented the left and right wing view. What it hasn’t presented is the extreme right (especially the version that crowds out all left wing views).
If CBC is genuine, it should play fair to both sides. Give the extreme left a platform as well.
Regardless of what he claims, O’Leary will not be “reporting” any side of any story. His show on BNN is a call-in, not a news program. Dragon’s Den (and Shark Tank) are about as far from news as you can get. He has no reporting background, e.g. j-school. Granted, he’s been successful in business, but just because I can ride a horse doesn’t mean I can play volleyball.
Lang, on the other hand, has her bona fides.
The man sounds like a megalomaniac. Left or right, I don’t like bombastic TV personalities, because I like to be swayed by the content of a person’s argument, not by attempts ar brow-beating and intimidation. We get enough of that from the halls of government.
Personally, I’ve always had a problem with people, like Leary, who consider themselves the ‘voice of reason”. People like that are usually so full of themselves that they can only spout platitudes and mindless drivel that they’ve collected over the years.
“Right Wing Voices of Reason” are even worse. They are self appointed arbiters of all that is morally corrupt about society and anyone with a left leaning view point is fair game for vilification.
Granted I’ve never seen Leary on TV, but I know I won’t be watching his and Lang’s show. I’ve had enough of right and left wing political hacks telling me how to think.
Who?
I get the sense from his comments that he’s merely being playful and provocative and not yet another arrogant blowhard, the kind of which has become so common on cable news. “We don’t need public medecine”? But he’s happy to take a cheque from the public broadcaster?That’s where I think his tongue is planted firmly in cheek.
That said, I’ve no idea what this show will be like. I get the sense they’re going for entertaining but I’m hoping it’ll also be informative.
Fred Langan is the best. I doubt O’Leary will endear himself to me as a broadcaster.
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1921635,00.html
Kevin O’Leary from the show Shark Tank answers questions during a press tour in Pasadena, Calif.
TV’s Shark Tank Guru: In Real Life, No Business Whiz
By STEPHEN GANDEL Thursday, Sep. 10, 2009
Kevin O’Leary stars on ABC’s new business reality show Shark Tank as one of five executives who vet business ideas pitched by would-be entrepreneurs. O’Leary often delivers the harshest of the business critiques. On a recent show, he called one small-business owner “radioactive.” On another show he told a woman who said her products spread happiness that her business was worthless.
That take-no-prisoners toughness is certainly entertaining, but behind the ego and bluster, O’Leary’s real-life business performance is spotty. All four of the funds run by O’Leary’s asset-management company are trailing the market this year. Shares of the company’s oldest fund, O’Leary Global Equity Income Fund, which was launched in 2008, have plunged nearly 24% in the past year. Next, there’s the truth-in-advertising problem: O’Leary calls himself an “eco-preneur,” but many of the funds’ investments are in coal companies and other large polluters. An O’Leary Funds representative declined to comment on the performance of the funds.
To be sure, O’Leary is not the only famous investor who has struggled to stay above water in the market recently. But O’Leary’s Global Equity Income Fund has sunk more than most. The average stock fund is down 12% in the past year, according to research firm Morningstar. Compared with other equity-income-fund managers, O’Leary has done even worse. Those funds, generally considered to be safer investments, on average have fallen 10%, or less than half the plunge of O’Leary’s fund. And O’Leary is not doing any better since the market turned up in early March. The average equity income fund has rebounded sharply, up nearly 49% since stocks reached their low in early March, according to Morningstar. Even with dividends, shares of the O’Leary Global Equity Income Fund are up less than a third of that, or 13%.
It’s not the first bit of unpleasantness for O’Leary. For most of the 1990s, he was the president of educational-software company Softkey, which he co-founded with fellow Canadian entrepreneur Michael Perik. O’Leary and Perik sold the firm, which they renamed the Learning Company, to Mattel in 1999 for $3.6 billion. But almost immediately the deal turned sour. The Learning Company lost $200 million in the second half of 1999 alone. O’Leary and Perik, who joined Mattel after the merger, left the toy company six months later in a management shake-up. In 2001, Mattel disposed of the Learning Company by giving away most of the division to a private-equity firm for free.
Anyone who can pick a corporate pocket for $3.6 billion is a pretty cool customer, but there are many lingering questions about the business that O’Leary and Perik delivered to Mattel in return for that money. “It was an ugly mess,” says Bernard Stolar, a software-industry veteran who was brought in by Mattel to take over the Learning Company from O’Leary and Perik. “There had been an awful lot of mismanagement at the company.” (See the top 10 financial-crisis buzzwords.)
Shareholders sued Mattel over the Learning Company deal, naming O’Leary and Perik, along with other members of the toy company’s management, as defendants. In the complaint, the shareholders alleged that under O’Leary and Perik the Learning Company used “accounting manipulations” to gain market share and drive up the company’s stock price. According to the suit, a sales manager at the Learning Company at the time of the Mattel merger told employees that he “suspected the ‘Learning Company is broke’ and is ‘cooking the books.’ ” Mattel paid shareholders $122 million to settle the suit. O’Leary and Perik settled as well. O’Leary did not return multiple calls for comment. In the past, O’Leary has blamed the problems at the Learning Company on the technology meltdown and a culture clash between the management of his company and Mattel.
Where O’Leary has had clear success is on television. He started his career as a television producer before venturing into the software industry. For the past few years, he has been a staple of Canada’s Business News Network, co-hosting a show called SqueezePlay. He is also one of the stars of the popular Dragon’s Den, the Canadian show that served as the model for Shark Tank. When producer Mark Burnett, who also created Survivor and The Apprentice, acquired the show for American airwaves, he imported O’Leary along with another Canadian cast member, Robert Herjavec.
Shark Tank airs on Sunday nights. It premiered in early August to weak ratings but has been picking up viewers recently. ABC’s website says the show gives individuals the “access to the means to live out their dreams.” Each week, entrepreneurs pitch their business ventures to the five “Sharks,” who in addition to O’Leary include real estate executive Barbara Corcoran and Daymond John, the founder of clothing brand FUBU. Both ABC and Mark Burnett Productions declined to comment on O’Leary’s past business dealings.
Over the years, O’Leary has often been an outspoken critic of fund managers who underperform the market. He launched his first fund in May 2008. In the prospectus he wrote, “The recent market sell-off has provided an attractive entry point in a variety of high-quality public securities.” Since that time, stocks in both Canada and the U.S. have plunged. O’Leary told Canadian business magazine Profit in June 2003, “There are a lot of idiot fund managers out there who add no value to the process at all.” If O’Leary doesn’t turn things around at his funds, he can add one more manager to his list.
thanks for that article.
amazed (ok, not) that Stursberg would hire such an operator.
god help the cbc.
How sickening to see that the CBC has degenerated to the level of American networks, making itself an arena for extremism simply to generate ratings.
I just caught a couple minutes of lang and o’leary…Is that guy for real or is it all a show? What a blowhard tool he is….Thinks banks should be allowed to get bigger and defended the banks payout of bonuses….WOW, he’d be a great guy at the bar…He’d get his face punched in with that BS he is yapping