Kiernan began his news career in 1988 at
CKRA-FM in
Edmonton while a business student at the
University of Alberta. He later made a transition from radio to television at Edmonton's
CFRN News. In 1993, he moved to another Edmonton television station,
CITV, where he produced the weekday primetime newscast. Kiernan moved to
New York City three years later to work for
Time Warner, where he soon became the morning anchor of
NY1. Kiernan is usually on air from 5 AM until 10 AM, weekdays. He was on air on the morning of the
September 11th terrorist attacks, and remained on air for nearly 15 hours that day. Kiernan also serves as a correspondent for
Business News Network in Canada. From 2000 to 2004, Kiernan was the co-anchor of the
CNNfn program
The Money Gang. His co-hosts included
Christine Romans and two fellow Canadians,
Amanda Lang and
Ali Velshi. In 2008, Kiernan created ''Pat's Papers'', a website curation of his favorite stories from newspapers across the United States. In January 2011, Kiernan joined
TrivWorks as a "Special Host" available for select corporate team building events. In January 2014, Kiernan added an afternoon job to his long-running morning routine, joining
WABC (AM) Radio to host a 5 pm weeknight news/talk show recapping the events of the day in and around New York City. He left WABC in early 2015. Kiernan joined
Bloomberg TV Canada in 2015 as the host of the channel's Thursday night
Bloomberg North program. The half-hour report reviews the week's global business events from a Canadian perspective. The routine of his early morning commute to work at NY1 is the subject of Kiernan's first children's book
Good Morning, City, published by
Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2016. A starred review in
Publishers Weekly explains that "Kiernan knows a lot about how a city shakes off sleep." Kiernan has appeared in cameos as himself or as a reporter in such films as
The Interpreter (2005),
Night at the Museum (2006),
True North (film) (2006),
The Son of No One (2011),
Iron Man 3 (2013), and
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014). He has been featured in publications including
New York magazine ("Morning Star", February 5, 2001), the
New York Post ("Dream Job: Pat Kiernan", October 3, 2005), and
The New Yorker ("Explainer"; May 21, 2012). On March 7, 2012, he served as guest co-host with
Kelly Ripa on
Live! with Kelly. The appearance came nearly a year after a
New York Magazine article in which he declared his interest in the soon-to-be-vacant job because it was a "rare intersection" of his knowledge of New York City and his passion for pop culture. The
New York Daily News covered the March 7 program with a minute-by-minute live blog. In 2013, Canada's
Report on Business named Kiernan one of the "16 Canadians We Want Back". ==Game shows==