For fifteen years, Bryant Charles Gumbel was a part of America’s
morning ritual. As the co-host of NBC’s Today Show, he would meet you
at the morning breakfast table, wide-eyed and brimming with the new
day’s headlines and trivia, which he delivered with his easy smile,
sharp intellect, and quirky wit.
He was the first African American broadcaster to co-host a
nationally televised morning show, proving to skeptics that Americans
could, indeed, embrace the idea of receiving their morning dose of news
and chitchat from a Black man.
In 1997, Gumbel ended his quarter-century association with NBC to
explore other opportunities. Now forty-nine, he is the principal
partner of CBS EYEMARK, the syndication company of CBS Inc., which aims
to produce primetime specials for the network, among other projects.
Though his most recent show, Public Eye With Bryant Gumbel, was
canceled earlier this summer, he appears undaunted about the future.
The day Black Issues Executive Editor Cheryl D. Fields came to
interview Gumbel at his CBS office in Manhattan, the soulfully robust
voice of Patti LaBelle wafted in the background. Surrounded by books,
dozens of teddy bears, and golf paraphernalia, among other memorabilia,
this multiple Emmy-Award-winning broadcaster talked about the current
state of broadcast journalism, the status of Blacks in higher
education, and the terrain he has covered since graduating from Bates
College with a liberal arts degree in 1970. The following is excerpted
from that conversation:
From where you sit, where are we in terms of diversity in the news business?
Not very well off, and I say that on two counts. Numerically,
[African Americans] clearly not as well represented as either we should
be or as anybody hoped we would be by this time. But also in a larger
and, perhaps, more troubling context, I wonder to what extent this has
something to do with the nature of the business.
As it’s presently constituted, I don’t know that it’s that
important to worry about gaining numbers. It certainly was, the way the
business [used to be] set up and the impact it had, in terms of setting
an agenda and pursuing real issues and dealing in things that are
important. But to deal with Cher? To deal with Carly Simon’s breast
cancer? Should we really worry that half the people who are doing that
are people of color?
