ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 23, 1996 TAG: 9611260004
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: ERIC MINK NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
A few seconds before 9 a.m. on Jan. 3, 1997, a floor director in NBC's Studio 1A will yell ``We're clear,'' and Bryant Gumbel's record-setting 15-year run as anchor of the ``Today'' program will be history.
Gumbel, no fan of loose ends, likes the tidiness of it. He started on ``Today'' on Monday, Jan. 4, 1982. Jan. 3, 1997, is a Friday.
``It is odd the way it worked out to the day,'' he said Monday. ``I'm conscious of things being somewhat ordered.''
Still unordered, however, is the succession at ``Today.'' News anchor Matt Lauer is likely to become Katie Couric's partner, but NBC has held off confirming it. And will co-anchor Couric move up to anchor - a role to which her performance and seniority entitle her - or will Couric and Lauer, if he gets the job, be co-anchors?
Gumbel's future, meanwhile, seems even less settled. He's talked with executives at NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and even Fox. Syndication, a route that offers huge financial potential along with huge risks for failure, is also under consideration.
``I've found this whole process flattering, informative and, I guess in some instances, amusing,'' Gumbel said, ``to the extent that I'm supposedly up for every job there is and supposedly doing this or doing that.''
Indeed, speculation about Gumbel's future activities has included everything from prime-time shows of his own at every network to taking over any number of existing news programs when anchors step down.
Gumbel has mixed feelings about all this. ``For somebody who's our age [he's 48], to have this degree of angst is, however flattering, discomforting at the same time, because we all like a degree of stability in our lives. And to a certain extent, those of us who are control freaks like to know what's going to happen and when, so that all the other pieces of life can flow into it.''
Even so, Gumbel said, ``I haven't put a hard timetable on anything. I feel no compulsion to make a decision by Jan. 4,'' although he acknowledged that some winnowing is inevitable. ``If I plan to take some time off after Jan. 3, it will not be very productive time off if I am still as anxiety-ridden as I am now. I suspect that by then, some things that are still unclear will have been clarified,'' he said.
Gumbel won't rule out the possibility of doing a pre-taped show. Fresh thinking and new ideas, he said, might be able to devise new formats to overcome the defects of existing ones.
But relying on tape, he said, is ``working with a net. I don't like nets because for a lot of people, they're a crutch. Some are inclined to sacrifice the pluses of spontaneity in order to achieve the look of perfection. I don't think that's a great trade.
``The Olympics are a great case in point. In an effort to make it as perfect as possible, did they [NBC] make it saccharine? I think so. It had all the excitement of a Bill Bixby film. I think that the viewer has so many more options, they would like something that is less predictable. Less sanitized. More honest.''
Meanwhile, Gumbel seems at peace with the two minor controversies that have swirled around him in the past year. The first was his removal, ostensibly because of a casual friendship with the defendant, from the NBC News team that was to have interviewed O.J. Simpson after his acquittal. Rather than fake enthusiasm for the event on the air, Gumbel stayed off the ``Today'' show for several days. Simpson subsequently canceled the interview.
``It felt like, in the vernacular of the kids, being dissed by my own people,'' Gumbel said. ``It felt somewhat insulting. I thought it was absurd to contend that after [reporting the story] for a year and a half on a daily basis, I suddenly was going to lack objectivity. It was salvaged in my own mind by the way I conducted myself within it. Although some people thought [staying off ``Today''] was unprofessional, I thought it was the only professional thing to do.''
Gumbel similarly has no second thoughts about the dispute over an interview he conducted with U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel after the death of U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown.
Gumbel asked Rangel, a Democrat, about the failure of prominent Republicans to express condolences to Brown's family, an assertion that Republicans quickly disputed. The program apologized for the wording of the question, but Gumbel did not.
``I was told personally [by members of the Brown family] that they had not received any,'' Gumbel said. ``Do I think I was wrong? No. Is it worth continuing the fight? No. I'm satisfied that my conscience is clear. I'm not sure everybody else can say that.''
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Gumbel. color. KEYWORDS: 2DAby CNB