L.A.'s Business Anchor.

Covering the West for CNN's 'Moneyline News Hour' came as a natural progression for Willow Bay after the network realized it's such a hot snot and her husband became president of Disney

WILLOW Bay, co-anchor of CNN's "Moneyline News Hour," packed her bags this summer and moved from New York to L.A. to be closer to her husband, Robert Iger, who this year was named president of the Walt Disney Co. Bay, a native New Yorker, is now co-anchoring "Moneyline" from the West Coast with the show's other co-anchor, Stuart Varney, remaining in New York City.

Working on the West Coast has its challenges. For one thing, the three-hour time difference between L.A. and the East Coast means the TV reporter/anchor gets up a lot earlier than she used to - at 5 a.m. - to start her day, which doesn't finish until 12 hours or so later.

But Bay, mother of a toddler son, is used to long hours. She has spent years working in front of the camera, in jobs that weren't necessarily heaven-made for a woman. Many TV viewers might recognize her from her eight years co-hosting the National Basketball Association's "NBA Inside Stuff" with Ahmad Rashad. Or they might recognize the 36-year-old from her days co-anchoring "CNN & Entertainment Weekly" and "CNN & Fortune." Or again, they might recognize her from her co-anchoring days on ABC's "Good Morning America/Sunday."

And if your memory is really good, you might recall a twenty-something Bay whose image was splashed across magazine ads as a model for cosmetics company Estee Lauder Inc.

Question: How is it different working on the West Coast than being in New York?

Answer: It's quite different. Our focus is both the day's market news and West Coast business news. So what is different for me is, I am and will be out of the studios more. I will, be going to visit the companies whose stocks we report on. I'll be profiling the CEOs running the companies. For our first week, I was away every day. We did a different city every day. It was great. Irvine was the first day. We did Broadcom and Henry Nicholas.

Q: What kind of reaction have you been getting from viewers about your West Coast coverage?

A: I have been surprised by the response from people in the area. People I bump into in the airport. I called to place an order at a store the other day, and the woman who ran the store said, "Oh, you are the Willow Bay from Moneyline. I saw that interview about Henry Nicholas. It was so interesting to me as a manager of a business." I think New York is used to massive news coverage and massive financial news coverage. On the West Coast, my sense is that viewers are excited by the notion of someone covering their universe from their universe.

Q: What are the challenges of doing a story here and communicating with your bosses back East?

A: The primary challenge for us is to generate story ideas and feed them back to New York. You have to dig for the stories rather than responding to the news events of the day, which is the bulk of the work in New York because the show is so stock market-driven.

Q: How do you go about looking for your stories?

A: It is a complete team effort. It is a combination of hearing things, reading things. Our executive producer in New York will see a stock moving and say, "Do you know anything about this company? Is there an interesting story there?" Or I will say, "I wonder if we should be digging about whether this Asian recovery is for real." The reality is, a lot of the stories are shot down because in part they are less obvious and because you are casting a wider net. And we are also in the process of building up our library -- people at companies we know we can call. Market watchers. Unlike New York, where that infrastructure is longstanding and large, this is brand new.

Q: What is a typical workday like?

A: 7:15 a.m. is our news call, so most of us out here do that from home and then come in after that. The producer goes through the news of the day, what reporters are assigned to what stories, what guests we have booked, what guests we would like to go for. Everybody pitches in ideas and what is going on. This is done by conference call. It's a big conference call because it is L.A., New York, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Chicago.

Q: Then what time do you come in?

A: It totally depends. Sometimes I will have hair and makeup at home. A hairdresser comes out to my house. In New York it is different. Everybody goes to the studio for hair and makeup. Here, with all the driving, I wanted it to be easier for them (hair stylists). So if it is easier for the hairdresser to come to my house (in Brentwood), depending on my day, then they come to my house. That's one of the things I'm learning about Los Angeles, needing to recalculate the time everything takes. Plus, we're on the air three hours earlier out here, so the rhythm of the day is completely different. By 7:15 in the morning, you feel like you're late.

Q: How did you get into journalism?

A: I wanted to be a journalist since I was a kid. But I thought it was too late after getting sidetracked. After getting my MBA, I thought maybe I would be a financial journalist. I was talked out of that and started doing fashion reporting, which I quite hated. But it was a way of learning television. I would do fashion reporting working with marketing companies. I would do morning talk shows with Regis and Kathy Lee or local city tours. I hosted a cable show and from there I ended up at the NBA show.

Q: How was it hosting a program about the NBA?

A: When they called, I thought they said MBA, as in master's. They were looking not for a sports reporter, just a reporter. The show that I did on cable was called "Inside Stuff" and was kind of a hybrid sports/entertainment show and geared toward teen-agers. They wanted someone young, someone not necessarily with a hardcore sports background. Honestly I got hired for my academic credentials at the end because my TV skills weren't particularly advanced. When they hired me, they basically made me give up my life. I had to do total immersion in the NBA.

Q: Who have been some of the more interesting people you have interviewed for "Moneyline"?

A: Larry Ellison (of Oracle) is a great character. Henry Nicholas (of Broadcom) is very interesting. He is really high energy, driven in a way I had never seen in terms of the combination of the energy and the sense of mission and the zeal with which he inspires his troops. There is this feeling they have to stay a step ahead in this world that is moving at Internet speed. Also interesting was living through the Microsoft trial. We did full shows on it. The verdicts would frequently come down at 6:31 p.m. So we had several shows devoted live as it happened to the different phases.

Q: How do you keep yourself up to speed on business news?

A: The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times get delivered every morning to the house. And there is an attempt to get through them before the 7:15 a.m. call. I get up at 5 a.m. And it's never early enough out here. And then Barron's comes. Those are the ones that come to the house. I use the Internet during the day, the standard news wire services but also other sites. And then talking to people. I do a lot of research on our live guests, prepping for those interviews.

Q: You basically moved out here because your husband was promoted to president of Walt Disney Co. Did CNN every say you'd be off the air because you were moving West?

A: No. Basically, what happened was that before Bob was named president of Disney, all the ABC executives, and there were about 200 or so, were scheduled to move out here this fall. He was part of this group. I knew it was likely that we would make this move. And CNN knew that all along. When I took the "Moneyline" job, they said, "Well, we have a year. Let's just do it and we'll figure out what to do at the end of the year. Maybe we'll switch you to another show." A year is a long time in TV. That was the plan. And when Bob was named president in January, senior management at CNN got excited. The market was riding high based on these tech companies. It was the height of excitement over the New Economy and the technological organization. And CNN was wrestling how to cover it. The two things dovetailed. They had a need, and I had a desire. It was a pleasant surprise how the executives embraced this concept of a bicoastal "Moneyline."

Q: What has the adjustment been like moving from the East Coast to the West Coast?

A: It has been a big adjustment. Living in a house was a big adjustment. We had an apartment in New York. It's a more suburban lifestyle. I never drove. And then the changes in the hours.

Q: Your husband has a very demanding job. Do you get to see each other much?

A: More now that we are living in the same city because from January to July he was in L.A. every week and came home (to New York) on the weekends. So we do wind up seeing each other. But with all two-career families, it is always tough to find private time and balancing all of that.

Willow Bay

Title: Co-anchor, "Moneyline News Hour"

Organization: CNN

Born: Malba, N.Y., 1963

Career Turning Point: Co-hosting "NBA Inside Stuff"

Residence: Brentwood

Personal: Married; 2-year-old son