Off and running

There wasn’t much pre-interview chit-chat as I sat in the CBC-TV studio last evening with Amanda Lang and Kevin O’Leary. They were both busy on their BlackBerrys which I took to be a good sign since I was there to talk about that very product as part of a series of media interviews this week to promote my new book.

I did hear that O’Leary attended the Canada-U.S. hockey game Sunday and left Vancouver on a 6 a.m. flight for Toronto on Monday to be on hand for the inaugural Lang & O’Leary Exchange in prime time. Until this week, the show ran for half an hour at 4:30 p.m.; now it goes for an hour starting at 7 p.m.

The co-hosts were discussing their respective BlackBerrys. Lang prefers the trackball, O’Leary the track pad. As an author, you never know where an interviewer will be coming from. In this case, I felt safe in assuming they were fans of the product!

They asked solid questions about the relationship between Research In Motion co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, patent battles and the corporate culture of RIM in Waterloo, Ont. The whole thing was over in six minutes and I was quickly scooted out of harm’s way as chairs were shuffled at the see-through desk for the next segment.

I wish them well in their new time slot. Like any business, they’re taking a risk with the change. As Producer Robert Sawatsky told me before the show, “We’ll find out if there’s a business audience at this time of day.” As someone who writes about business, I hope so. The more business stories that are told and heard, the better we all understood the economy. These days, that’s a necessity.