Cover Story

Issue date:
September 5-7, 1997

Gumbel's New Gamble

Next weekend, the longtime morning star hosts the Emmys. Next month, he launches a prime-time show. But Bryant Gumbel isn't changing his tune about TV, race, work or his tough standards.

O GET TO BRYANT GUMBEL'S NEW offices at CBS, you must navigate dim hallways stacked with unpacked boxes, bare walls and empty desks. But any sense of tentativeness is erased when the door to his sunny, spacious office swings open, and there's that face we've all become familiar with after 15 years on NBC's Today show. Gumbel flashes a grin that simultaneously welcomes and sizes up.

Gumbel -- who hosts next week's prime-time Emmys, and whose newsmagazine Public Eye With Bryant Gumbel debuts on CBS next month -- left Today of his own volition when it was the top-rated morning show (it still is), took a few months off, and re-emerged at CBS with a five-year deal at a reported $5 million a year. The deal includes a series of prime-time news specials and the opportunity to develop lucrative syndicated programming for the CBS Eyemark service. (He also hosts the successful Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel on HBO.)

Despite the relaxed facade, Gumbel, who turns 49 this month, obviously is a man who drives himself. Gumbel has been called arrogant (a famous leaked memo lashing weatherman Willard Scott didn't help), sexist (he denies it, but says he doesn't cut anyone any slack), a control freak ("only where myself is concerned"), and, worst of all epithets, a liberal. What he has never been called is unintelligent, unprepared -- or unopinionated.

Gumbel's family includes his wife, June, and kids Bradley, 18, and Jillian, 14. Gumbel has been dogged by tabloid stories of problems in his marriage, including one this summer that he had moved out of the family home. Asked about that last month, he said, "It's a personal matter, a sensitive matter, and before you go to press it may be a changed situation, anyway. No, I didn't get thrown out of the house. We've been married 24 years and, like a lot of married couples, you struggle through things."

But professional life clearly is not a struggle for Gumbel. Excerpts from the interview:

On why he's doing a newsmagazine show: The world doesn't need another prime-time show that's like all the others. So we're going to do things differently: live. Obviously we're going to have taped elements, but complemented by live interviews. I think the public, with some justification, has a great deal of cynicism about what we do. They think we interview you for 10 hours, carve it up to five minutes and make you say what we want you to say. And while we can't defeat that cynicism, we can minimize it by putting a lot of live elements to it.

On top at the Today show, why did he switch to CBS? "When it's time for me to walk away, I walk away."

On being a journalist: I'm always amused with people in this business who get so lofty: "I realized I wanted to be a journalist when I was 6." I didn't. Until I was 21, the only thing I ever worried about was what I was going to be doing that weekend. But growing up, the imperative was to be a professional. Your parents thought you had to be either a doctor or a lawyer ... because these were the only jobs we [blacks] were open to, to make money. There were no black businessmen. None that I knew of. There were no black journalists. We didn't see them on TV. So, their way of thinking was: The only way you can protect yourself, son, is to be a doctor or a lawyer; that way you can't be fired. You can run your own business, be your own boss. I was supposed to be a lawyer.

On being called arrogant: I think nothing in this country happens absent of race. I do think there are a great number of Americans who are more comfortable with blacks [as] comics, jokesters, always laughing, never taking the world or themselves too seriously. I can think of very few, if any, well-known African-American men in this business who were not accused of arrogance. Do I think it's a coincidence? No. I think in this business people get where they are because they have to make certain decisions, judgments, they have to take certain stands. And I do think it less than amusing that Ted Koppel runs his shop in a tight fashion and is concerned about the graphics, concerned about who his producer is, gets tough with his director, and that shows his professionalism, his attention to detail. But if I do that, suddenly I'm a meddler, or I'm arrogant, or I'm conceited, or I make enemies. I don't get it.

On the future of race relations: I tend to be a pessimist where race is concerned generally, because I like the old line that a pessimist is an optimist with experience. I don't see any great, brilliant signs that we're getting anywhere. We are moving at glacier pace. On the other hand, my father, who passed away in '72, could never, ever have foreseen a person of color, let alone his son, where he's at today. I do have to sit back and say there are people who can break away.

The problem is they remain isolated incidents, and they say an awful lot more about Bill Cosby, about Ed Bradley, about Oprah Winfrey, about Bryant Gumbel, than they do about society at large. [The public is] willing to reward, honor -- to a certain extent, glorify -- those people, but they don't want to hear about the permanent underclass. They don't want to hear about people who are consigned to a life so far different than theirs in which they are essentially trapped. Whatever [blacks] were or weren't in the '40s, '50s and '60s, we were in the national consciousness, and people knew what was going on was wrong. You don't get that feeling now. You get the feeling everybody goes, "It's OK, and if they're down there, they're down there 'cause they wanna be."

What bothers him about an apology for slavery: The apology speaks to the same idea as when you were kids. "All right, say you're sorry." And you'd say you're sorry, and the person would say OK, and then everything was fine, go play. You weren't sorry, and they didn't really accept it. ...

I have to tell you a funny story. A couple of years ago, there's about six couples who always get together every Valentine's Day. We are sitting there at a luxurious Manhattan restaurant, the only black table in the place. Six guys: me, a lawyer, an investor and three doctors, all well-off. All the wives are college graduates. We are sitting there enjoying our meal, and in the middle of the whole thing, the maitre d' comes over: "Just thought y'all would want to know the Knicks just went into overtime." And we started to laugh. We started to go, "Can we have some fried chicken, too, and get some watermelon over here, too?" It was one of those instances where you realize that people still see you in a certain way.

On celebrity gossip shows: I hate them.

"I am less sexist than most people would accuse me of."

On the Frank Gifford tabloid scandal: I hate to take [the Globe's] side, and I'm not, 'cause there but for the grace of God go I. I think it became a big deal because [Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford] paraded who they were. Prior to [the story about Frank's infidelity], there were infomercials about them being the perfect couple. Had that been somebody who hadn't marketed themselves in that fashion ... would it have been as big a deal? I don't think so. Believe me, it doesn't make it right. That's just an explanation for why I think it became such a big deal.

On feeling powerless: We have more things now that we can't get over. I'll give you an example. When I was growing up, if your car didn't work, you'd get underneath the hood, attach the dual piston ram or rod, or whatever it was, and get it going. Now cars are electronic. You gotta take it in. When I was a kid, if your record started skipping, you'd put a penny on it or you'd change the needle. You put something in your CD and it doesn't give it back to you. You just look at it. You feel like an idiot. Typewriter ... change the ribbon, unstick the key. Now, if this computer ain't working, what do I do? We have an awful lot of stuff like that, things over which we have zero control.

On being called a liberal: It's hard to be defined as a conservative if you're a black man and care about black people. I think it's very difficult. Basically ... "conservative'' says the status quo is good. I mean, how can you look out there at the vast majority of people of color and say, "Oh, yes. This is something I can applaud. It's a situation I'd like to keep. This is obviously working." I don't see that. There are some conservatives of great character and some conservatives with great caring who would argue that proper conservatism says, "Oh, no, we do want to change the status quo, but we want to do it in a different fashion than liberals want to do it"; i.e., Jack Kemp. I don't have a problem with that.

On sexism: I am less sexist than most people would accuse me of. People are products of their environment and experience. They see things through those prisms. The only thing I've ever said about feminists is that I think it is difficult for a black man to appreciate -- fully -- the concerns of women in a sexist society, when his primary focus is on race in a racist society. I'm not sexist. I'm the least sexist person people know, because I'm somebody who judges strictly on merit. And if I ever had a problem with women, it was simply that I applied to them as harsh a standard as I did to everybody.

What he watches on TV: A lot of ESPN. Sports. Movies. I like old black-and-white movies. I'm not a TV junkie. Al Roker, whom I used to work with, and who's still a good friend, can sing every jingle that ever came down the road and can tell you everybody who was in every show. I never saw Gilligan's Island. I grew up reading. That's what we did. I don't view myself as an elitist -- I'm sitting here watching hockey games. It's not like I'm turning on PBS and watching the opera. But it's never been my way to sit there and turn on prime time. I've never seen Home Improvement. I've never seen ER. I've never seen Friends. I would rather watch a ballgame or, failing that, listen to music or read.

On whether he can still watch the Today show: Yes. Uncomfortably.

Contributing Editor Jill Nelson last profiled actor Samuel L. Jackson.