David Brinkley, in later years.
David McClure Brinkley (July 10 1920 – June 11 2003) was a popular American
television newscaster for NBC and later ABC.
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 a top commentator on election coverage for ABC News, and
was host of the popular Sunday This Week program.
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. 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 newsbiz 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.
David Brinkley covering the launch of the
Apollo 11 rocket for NBC News on the morning of
July 16 1969.
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 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, 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.
Almost immediately after leaving NBC, Brinkley was offered a job at ABC, where he began hosting a Sunday-morning talk show,
This Week with David Brinkley, which featured several correspondents and interviews with a guest newsmaker, followed by an
opinionated roundtable of discussion. The format proved highly successful and was soon imitated.
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
- 1996 - Washington Goes to War (ISBN-10: 034540730X / ISBN-13: 978-0345407306)
- 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).
External links
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