Bryant Gumbel Finally Tells About That Memo

Bryant Gumbel finally has something to say about his famous memo.

It has been a little more than a year since the “Today” show host’s blistering critique of his fellow workers found its way to the pages of most newspapers around the country. But in that year, Gumbel has said nothing publicly about its contents, except for a veiled on-air reference.

The long silence is over: On Monday, while taping an interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters, Gumbel defended his writing of the memo but conceded that “I used language that probably was more colorful and more provocative than it needed to be.”

Gumbel, who rarely gives interviews, said he was ending the press embargo--at least for Walters--because of “the willingness on the part of a lot of people . . . (to believe that) silence indicates guilt.”

The interview will be broadcast Friday on ABC News’ “20-20.”

Gumbel spoke at length with Walters on many subjects, including his relationship with co-host Deborah Norville, but Walters was especially dogged on the topic of the memo.

In the four-page, single-spaced memo, written and stored in NBC’s computer files, Gumbel had said, among other things, that weatherman Willard Scott “holds the show hostage to his assortment of whims, wishes, birthdays and bad taste”; that movie reviewer Gene Shalit’s reviews “are often late and his interviews aren’t very good,” and that consumer reporter David Horowitz is “a walking cliche.”

Gumbel told Walters that his relationship with Scott is “very good. I like Willard,” adding that after news of the memo broke, he repeatedly tried to call Scott. “We finally got together . . . and we shed a lot of tears over the phone,” he said.

“The other thing that I guess grates on me . . . is there is this idea that Bryant hatcheted everybody with the program. A reading of the memo indicates that 90% of it was absolutely positive.”

Columnist Liz Smith with more on Gumbel, Page 9