David Brinkley

David McClure Brinkley (July 10 1920 – June 11 2003) was an American newscaster for NBC, and later ABC in a career spanning from 1951-1997.

From 1956 through 1970, he co-anchored NBC's top rated nightly news program, The Huntley–Brinkley Report with Chet Huntley. In 1970, the broadcast was renamed NBC Nightly News, with Brinkley, John Chancellor, and Frank McGee co-anchoring. Later, in the 1980s and 1990s, Brinkley was host of the popular Sunday This Week with David Brinkley program, as well as a top commentator on election night coverage for ABC News.

Biography

Brinkley was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he began writing for a local newspaper, the Wilmington Morning Star, while still attending New Hanover High School. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Emory University, and Vanderbilt University, before entering service in the United States Army in 1941. Following his 1943 discharge, he moved to Washington, D.C., looking for a radio job at CBS News. Instead, he took a job at NBC News and became its first White House correspondent.

Career

The year 1952 had seen the birth of an electronic-journalism star when Walter Cronkite anchored CBS's coverage of the political conventions. In 1956, NBC News executives were looking for their own breakout newsman star. In NBC's efforts to determine which one of Brinkley and Huntley would make the better anchor for NBC's political-convention coverage, an impasse arose: half of the NBC news executives wanted Chet Huntley as solo anchor; the other half wanted Brinkley. Then came the suggestion to have two anchors instead of one. That insight led to Brinkley's pairing with Huntley to cover the Democratic and Republican national conventions.

The match worked so well that the two took over NBC's flagship nightly newscast, with Huntley in New York City and Brinkley in Washington, D.C., for the newly christened Huntley–Brinkley Report. Brinkley's dry wit offset the serious tone set by Huntley; and the program proved popular with audiences turned off by the incessantly serious tone of CBS's news broadcasts of that era. The Huntley–Brinkley Report was America's most popular television newscast until it was overtaken, at the end of the 1960s, by the CBS Evening News, anchored by Walter Cronkite.

When Huntley retired from the anchor chair in 1970, the show was renamed NBC Nightly News, and Brinkley co-anchored the broadcast with John Chancellor and McGee. In 1971, Brinkley became the program's commentator, delivering three-minute perspectives several times a week under the title David Brinkley's Journal. By 1976, though, NBC decided to revive the dual-anchor format, and Brinkley once again anchored the Washington desk for the network, until October 1979. However, the early years of Nightly News never achieved the popularity Huntley-Brinkley Report had enjoyed. For its part, NBC attempted to launch several newsmagazine shows during the 1970s with Brinkley as anchor; none of them succeeded. An unhappy Brinkley left NBC in 1981; NBC Magazine was his last show for that network.

Almost immediately after leaving NBC, Brinkley was offered a job at ABC. ABC News President Roone Arledge was anxious to replace ABC's Sunday morning news program, Issues and Answers, which had always lagged far behind CBS's Face the Nation and NBC's Meet the Press. Brinkley was tapped for the job, and in 1981 began hosting This Week with David Brinkley. This Week revolutionized the Sunday morning news program format, featuring not only several correspondents interviewing guest newsmakers, but also following up with an opinionated roundtable of discussion. The format proved highly successful and was soon imitated by Brinkley's NBC and CBS rivals, as well as new programs which later came into existence.

Retirement

Days before his announced retirement from regular news coverage, Brinkley made a rare on-air mistake on election night 1996, at a moment when he thought they were on commercial break. One of his colleagues asked him what he thought of Bill Clinton's re-election. His answer was, "The next four years will be filled with pretty words, and pretty music, and a lot of goddamn nonsense!" One of his team pointed out that they were still on the air. Brinkley said, "Really? Well, I'm leaving anyway!" Brinkley worked this mistake into a chance for an apology as part of a one-on-one interview with Clinton that followed a week or so later.

Brinkley stepped down from hosting This Week on November 10 1996, but continued to provide small commentary pieces for the show until 1997. He then fully retired from television. He had been an electronic journalist for over fifty years and had been anchor or host of a daily or weekly national television program for just over forty years, longer than anyone else. His career lasted from the beginning of broadcast news to the information age.

During his career, he won ten Emmy Awards and three George Foster Peabody Awards. In 1992, President George H. W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. Bush called him "the elder statesman of broadcast journalism"; but Brinkley was much more humble. In an interview in 1992, he said "Most of my life, I've simply been a reporter covering things, and writing and talking about it".

Brinkley was the father of the noted historian and Columbia University Provost, Alan Brinkley.

Brinkley died at the age of 82 at his home in Houston, Texas, from complications after a fall. His body is interred at Oakdale Cemetery, Wilmington, North Carolina.

Television career

• 1951-56 Camel News Caravan (correspondent)
• 1956-70 NBC News/The Huntley-Brinkley Report
• 1961-63 David Brinkley's Journal
• 1971-76 NBC Nightly News (commentator only)
• 1976-79 NBC Nightly News (co-anchor)
• 1980-81 NBC Magazine with David Brinkley
• 1981-96 This Week with David Brinkley
• 1981-98 ABC World News Tonight (commentator)

Books

• 1988 - Washington Goes to War (ISBN-10: 034540730X / ISBN-13: 978-0345407306)
• 1995 - David Brinkley: 11 Presidents, 4 Wars, 22 Political Conventions, 1 Moon Landing, 3 Assassinations, 2,000 Weeks of News and Other Stuff on Television and 18 Years of Growing Up in North Carolina (ISBN 0-345-37402-9).
• 1996 - Everyone Is Entitled to My Opinion (ISBN-13: 978-0-679-45071-9)

References

External links

• David Brinkley obituary by Richard Severo, The New York Times.
• with Brinkley by Ron Steiman, (1960-1961).
• David Brinkley collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society - Over 150,000 documents covering Brinkley's career
• YouTube clip of Huntley-Brinkley Report, November 21, 1969