Tom Brokaw Won’t Talk Brian Williams (Now That He's Won): ‘It’s Time to Move On’

July 11th, 2015 10:25 AM

Former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw is treated with great deference inside the Peacock Network, as if he were the Cronkite of his generation. So when he was seen as the King of the Old Guard that felt Brian Williams was ruining the brand with his egotistical inventions of dangerous exploits, he was seen as the secret iron fist that felled the new star.

In an interview with Lloyd Grove of the Daily Beast, who oozes about how he first knew Brokaw when he was a rising star anchoring the weekend news and Grove was a summer assistant at 30 Rock, Brokaw sees no need to say a new word:

“It’s time to move on,” Brokaw says, by way of deflecting my questions about the messy episode and his reported role in answering requests for advice from higher-ups at NBC Universal and its parent company, Comcast, on how it might be fixed.

“I’m really not commenting on it, except to say there’s now been a resolution,” Brokaw says. “My whole concentration at the moment is on Lester Holt, who I think the world of, and keeping Nightly at the top of its game.”

Brokaw adds: “We have a terrific staff of people around the world, and that’s my real concentration at the moment. Brian has now gone public, and he has a new assignment [as a live breaking news anchor on MSNBC and, occasionally, as needed, on NBC]. We have to move on…Listen, these are all private conversations and I don’t want to go beyond that.”

When I press him to be more forthcoming, Brokaw laughs and says: “I’ve been on both sides of this equation for a long time. I know how persistent you are, but you’re not gonna win this one.

Brokaw's internal battle was described in Bryan Burrough's probing story inside NBC in Vanity Fair. The conflict between the two NBC anchors came at an event for multiple myeloma, the cancer Brokaw survived:

Tom was devastated to find out that [NBC executive] Pat Fili, who is just so blind to the relationships and what really went on, told the people putting on the dinner that it would be great to have Brian introduce Tom. That was the last thing Tom wanted. And then Brian started off telling stories. He told the Berlin Wall story. Well, this sent Tom into spasms of anger.”

The “Berlin Wall story” was one Williams has long told—and apparently embellished—about the time he and Brokaw visited the Berlin Wall, in 1989. “This is the perfect example of what Brian does,” says a former NBC executive who worked closely with Williams for years. “He will say, and I’ve heard this a hundred times, ‘When Tom and I were at the Berlin Wall … ‘ O.K., so when he tells that story, he kind of implies that when the wall fell he was there with Tom. But he wasn’t. He was there the next day. It wasn’t malicious—it’s just Brian being Brian. It’s the part of Brian’s personality that bothers Tom the most.”....

“Tom and Brian,” one longtime friend of both men says with a sigh, “that was never a good relationship. Tom pushed for him to get that job. But Brian never embraced Tom. And I don’t know why…. He knows the rank and file will never love him like they did Tom, so he never tries. That’s the reason there’s not a lot of support for Brian over there.” An industry insider adds, “There is also a lot of envy of Williams’s movie-star good looks, his long happy marriage to a wonderful woman, great kids, and he’s paid millions to read a thousand words five times a week from a teleprompter.”

Williams clearly thought when he lost the battle to return to the NBC mountain top, he had been ruined by his predecessor:

“I talked to Brian about this,” says one friend, “and I’ll never forget what he said at the end. He said, ‘Chalk one up for Brokaw.’ ”