Bruce DuMont -- longtime host of the "Beyond the Beltway" political radio talk show, the founder of the Museum of Broadcast Communications, and former television producer, host and analyst whose résumé included a stint at CBS Chicago -- has died.
DuMont died Wednesday, Sept. 10, CBS News Chicago has learned. He was 81 years old.
DuMont was born June 18, 1944, in New London, Connecticut, and lived in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood growing up. His uncle, Allen DuMont, was the founder of the DuMont television network -- a very early rival to CBS, NBC, and ABC that once counted WGN-TV Channel 9 in Chicago as among its affiliates.
DuMont told interviewer Aaron Hanania in 2017 that he got the bug for television on a visit to New York City for his 10th birthday -- when he visited the set of the DuMont network show "Captain Video and His Video Rangers" and got to sit in a prop spaceship on the set for the show.
In a 2017 interview with WBEZ radio, DuMont said as a 12- or 13-year-old boy, he and a friend also made trips on the bus from Logan Square to Nathan Hale Court outside Tribune Tower to be interviewed on TV broadcaster Ernie Simon's nightly man-on-the-street show -- in exchange for a box of Kraft Cheese and two tickets to Balaban & Katz movie theaters.
But while DuMont's first passion was television, he began his broadcasting career in radio. As recalled in a 1987 Chicago Reader article, DuMont made his first appearance on radio in the summer of 1964 while studying at Columbia College Chicago -- as a fill-in weekend disc jockey at WEEF in Highland Park.
Not long afterward, DuMont went on the air as a broadcaster for the semiprofessional Chicago Panthers' football games on WLS-FM radio. Soon after that, he signed on as the original producer of the WGN radio show "Extension 720" beginning in 1968, according to a Windy City Times biography published in 2001.
In 1970, DuMont changed gears and ran for Illinois State Senate. The Republican lived on savings as he took on Democratic incumbent Robert Cherry, the Reader reported.
In the 1970 Illinois senate race, DuMont told the Reader he was "perhaps the most liberal Republican to run in Illinois. In the middle of the campaign, Kent State happened, and I denounced Vice President Spiro Agnew."
DuMont lost the race and returned to broadcasting and WGN-AM afterward as producer of conservative talk show host Howard Miller's program, published reports recall. In 1974, DuMont went on the air with his own show at radio stations WEAW and later WLTD in Evanston, the Reader recalled.
The Windy City Times noted that as a radio journalist, DuMont began to attract national attention for his reports on the Watergate crisis and constitutional abuses by the FBI and CIA in the 1970s.
In 1978, DuMont joined CBS Chicago, WBBM-TV, Channel 2 as a producer -- working with renowned talk show host Lee Phillip on the midday news-talk show "Noonbreak." The program paired an interview and talk segment hosted by Phillip with a news report by one of Channel 2's anchors -- Mort Crim, Bob Wallace, and Harry Porterfield each served a stint -- and a weather forecast by meteorologist Harry Volkman. DuMont was the producer of Phillip's 15-minute talk segments following the news reports.
DuMont also produced the public affairs show "Channel 2: The People," hosted by Porterfield.
While at CBS Chicago, published reports note, DuMont won an Iris Award for his work on a documentary on teen suicides, and a Golden Gavel Award for the documentary "What Can Johnny Read?" which focused on library censorship.
In 1982, DuMont left CBS Chicago for WTTW-Channel 11 after catching the attention of that station's master interviewer and talk show host John Callaway -- also a Channel 2 News alum. Two years later, DuMont became the original producer of "Chicago Tonight" -- WTTW's nightly panel interview program hosted by Callaway.
"Chicago Tonight" debuted during the first year of Mayor Harold Washington's term and the infamous Council Wars, in which a bloc of 29 aldermen led by Ald. Ed Vrdolyak (10th) set out to thwart the mayor's every initiative. WTTW notes that Callaway and DuMont pitched the show to station president Bill McCarter as a window for viewers into what was going on in city government.
Mayor Washington himself was the first guest on the program.
DuMont soon went on the air himself on "Chicago Tonight," anchoring the program's coverage of the 1984 Democratic and Republican national conventions, the Windy City Times recalled. DuMont also served as senior political analyst for "Chicago Tonight" on the air with Callaway, and sometimes hosted the show himself.
While with Channel 11, DuMont also hosted the program "Illinois Lawmakers" beginning in 1987. The program on Springfield politics aired on public television stations across Illinois, and ran until 2006.
Meanwhile, DuMont remained on the radio all through his career in local TV. He hosted a weekly Thursday night program called "The Chicago Show" on WBEZ beginning in 1976. The program was soon remaned "The Bruce DuMont Show."
The show was a general discussion program that featured such guests as traveling authors discussing their books, DuMont told WBEZ in 2017.
Four years later at WBEZ, DuMont had an idea for a change to the show.
"In 1980, the political climate both at the state and national level on both sides of the aisle was a pretty exciting time, so I went to Carole Nolan, the general manager at the time, and I said, 'Carole, I'd like to kind of switch the format of the program during this 13-week, you know, campaign, and I'd like it to be by, for, and about political junkies,'" DuMont told WBEZ.
The initial 13-week run for "Inside Politics" was a runaway success. In 1989, WBEZ program director Ken Davis took "Inside Politics" national as a WBEZ-produced show.
In 1992, "Inside Politics" moved to commercial radio on WLS-AM and was renamed "Beyond the Beltway," published reports note. "Beyond the Beltway" went into national syndication a few years later and aired on WLS-AM for more than 22 years before the station dropped the program in 2015.
"Beyond the Beltway" was later heard on WCGO and WIND radio until production wrapped in January 2025.
A televised version of "Beyond the Beltway" also aired on former secondary Chicago public TV station WYCC-Channel 20 for several years.
DuMont told Hanania that the title "Beyond the Beltway" said it all for the program -- discussions about national and international politics with people who are not Washington insiders. The show instead featured discussions with "professors and very bright journalists, and they offer their perspective on what's happening in the world -- and it isn't just the official leaders of the Republican and Democratic Party or official executives of government that are basically talking to people."
In 1982, DuMont began development of the Museum of Broadcast Communications, with a mission to preserve the archives of radio and television stations that did not have the space or resources to do so themselves. The Museum of Broadcast Communications opened in 1987 at River City, 800 S. Wells St. -- with a variety of historical artifacts and recordings from old-time radio and TV; a vast video archive; and a mockup news studio where youngsters could read a scripted newscast before real cameras and even toss to a pre-recorded weather forecast by WGN-TV's Tom Skilling.
The museum also hosted one-on-one talks for audiences with a variety of media figures -- with DuMont himself as the interviewer for many. Disc jockey Herb Kent; "Soul Train" creator and host Don Cornelius; screenwriter and television producer Norman Lear; television executive Fred Silverman; Jeff Smith of "The Frugal Gourmet" fame; and CBS Chicago anchorman/commentator Walter Jacobson and feature reporter Bob Wallace were among the many icons with whom the museum hosted talks.
The Museum of Broadcast Communications moved to the Chicago Cultural Center in 1992. The museum remained at the Cultural Center until 2003, and then operated online only for several years before opening a new space at 360 N. State St. in River North in 2012. The museum is now in search of its next permanent location.
DuMont retired from the Museum of Broadcast Communications in 2017.
DuMont is survived by his husband, Kevin Fuller; his daughter Jennifre DuMont; several grandchildren.