Arts & Entertainment

Bruce DuMont, Who Helped Launch ‘Chicago Tonight’ During Decadeslong Broadcasting Career, Dies at 81

Bruce DuMont, the longtime television and radio correspondent, broadcaster and producer who helped create and lead WTTW’s “Chicago Tonight,” has died at the age of 81.

The Museum of Broadcast Communications, which Dumont founded and led, announced his death in a statement.

“Bruce DuMont’s dedication to preserving our broadcast heritage gave Chicago and the nation an invaluable cultural resource,” museum chairman David Plier said in a statement. “We extend our condolences to his family and friends, and we honor his extraordinary contribution to media history.”

A native of New London, Connecticut, DuMont moved to Chicago and launched his broadcasting career in the 1960s, working first as a producer for WGN Radio. He made an unsuccessful run for a state Senate seat in 1978, but returned to journalism soon after.

In 1980, DuMont launched “Inside Politics,” which later became the show “Beyond the Beltway,” a syndicated radio political talk show which ran for decades.

“The format has remained the same,” DuMont told WTTW News during a 2020 interview. “Four people with passion on each side of the political spectrum, getting together and having a lively discussion of what was happening in politics this week. I always thought of it as being by and for and about political junkies. I didn’t want to stop and explain who everybody we were talking about was, though when we went national, I made a few concessions.”

The original “Inside Politics” team, 1980. From left: Sheldon Gardner, Bruce DuMont, Ald. Clifford Kelley, Marilyn D. Clancy, Tom Roeser and Phil Krone. (Courtesy Bruce DuMont)

DuMont later worked at WBBM-TV and eventually joined WTTW in the early 1980s following a promise from management that he’d be able to spend more time in front of the camera instead of working strictly behind the scenes.

Following the election of Harold Washington as mayor in 1983, DuMont and longtime WTTW host John Callaway worked to create a new nightly news program that could address the fast-evolving landscape of local politics during the reign of Chicago’s first African American mayor.

The result was “Chicago Tonight,” which at the time aired at 10:30 p.m.

Washington was the first-ever guest on the show’s first episode in April 1984.

DuMont served as the first producer of “Chicago Tonight,” and often filled in as host.

Jay Smith, WTTW News director and executive producer of “Chicago Tonight,” worked with DuMont on the show in the late 1980s and into the 1990s.

“Bruce loved politics and Bruce loved broadcasting,” Smith said. “Bruce was like a kid in a candy store covering City Hall, and he and John Callaway did tremendous work detailing the inner workings of Harold Washington’s administration on the program, as well as those that followed.”

DuMont also worked to preserve the history of his profession.

“Bruce was passionate about broadcast history, especially Chicago’s role nationally, as well as its development locally,” Smith said. “The Museum of Broadcast Communications was his baby, and one of the things he was most proud of.”

DuMont also hosted the WTTW show “Illinois Lawmakers,” which focused on politics in the state capitol and aired until 2006.

In 1983, he launched the Museum of Broadcast Communications, which has since grown into one of the nation’s leading archives dedicated to preserving and interpreting the history of radio and television.

“When I was working for Channel 2, (WBBM-TV), I saw the way in which old programs, basically 2-inch videotapes at the time, were really just piled up,” he said in 2020. “Nobody was keeping track of what they were. They weren’t even being indexed on index cards. It bothered me that future generations would never have an opportunity to see historic programs.”

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Video: Bruce DuMont appears on the June 25, 2020, episode of “Chicago Tonight” to discuss 40 years of broadcast work.

Dan Andries contributed to this report.

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