AFTER THE BREAK...

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

First, let it be known that Bryant Gumbel doesn't spend every hour of the workday in the nattiest Joseph Abboud suit. On a midsummer morning at CBS's Manhattan studios, he is wearing slightly wrinkled cotton trousers and a golf shirt as he heads an editorial meeting for his new weekly prime-time newsmagazine show, Public Eye with Bryant Gumbel (CBS, Wednesdays, 9 p.m. E.T.).

Gumbel seems like a fun boss (Hey, there's a plastic humanoid M&M behind his desk). He tosses a paper ball in the air as his producers pitch story suggestions, and even digresses from the matters at hand to suggest a movie rental (the Belgian crime drama Man Bites Dog). But he displays no loosey-gooseyness about what he wants. He quickly rejects stories that sound even remotely as if they could spring from the mouth of Steve Dunleavy. During the past months, he has told the world in almost mantra-like fashion that he doesn't want his show tainted by the whiff of salaciousness. "There are a lot of other people doing those stories," he reasons. "Commercially, it's not viable. It's a crowded arena. If someone wants to say that's a crass, commercial decision, well, fine. Fine."

A crowded arena, indeed. Public Eye, which makes its debut this week, will battle it out for viewers and good stories with no fewer than five other TV newsmagazines that are already cramping network television's prime-time schedule. If, during his 15-year tenure on the Today show, Gumbel did not always display the intellectual heft or consistent coolheadedness of such newsmen as Tim Russert or Ted Koppel (the interviewer with whom he is too often favorably compared), he did manage to brand himself as television's most engagingly willful journalist. And beyond offering the intense presence of Gumbel, Public Eye will distinguish itself as TV's only live newsmagazine. It will regularly feature real-time interviews; Primetime Live, despite its name, does not.

How big a draw the live element will be, though, is questionable. And other than that feature, Public Eye does not appear to be different from its peers. The show's producers and regular correspondents (among them, veteran Bernard Goldberg and the young, powder blue-shoe wearing Alison Stewart) come mostly from other CBS newsmagazines, such as 48 Hours and the network's mercifully short-lived Coast to Coast. Taped segments will cover the usual mix of hard and soft news, with stories ranging from Bosnian war criminals to incompetent telephone operators. Hidden-camera reports, producers say, will occasionally be used in the broadcast.

The plans for Public Eye may seem formulaic, but just how stressful launching such a venture can be was obvious two days after Gumbel played host to the Emmys in Los Angeles and was back on the East Coast in a CBS wardrobe room getting prepped for a photo shoot. As network staff members dropped by to compliment him on his performance, he was yukking it up with the hair and makeup women, telling them how he had thought about helping Gillian Anderson on stage because she looked so immobile in her tight dress. But his spirits quickly shifted, when he started talking to Public Eye's spokeswoman about his discovery that part of a prized Peter Van Sant piece, shot in North Korea and scheduled to air on PE's first episode, had been borrowed by CBS Evening News. "You want to know what pisses me off?" he exclaimed. "That f______ pisses me off!"

A few days later, in a calmer state, Gumbel explained that he felt the move by his superiors was simply "bad strategy." He added, "Someone could contend that the story was news and you shouldn't hold news. I don't feel compelled by that argument."

It is unlikely he ever pretended to his bosses that he could be. If there is anything that Bryant Gumbel seems innately incapable of, it is faking sentiment. (No one has forgotten his infamous 1988 memo rightly excoriating Willard Scott's Today show antics.) That could make it especially hard for Gumbel to compete in a newsmagazine world full of melodramatic affect and a sense of false earnestness.

In essence, the success or failure of Public Eye depends on just how refreshing--or objectionable--the world finds a newsmagazine host who isn't that big on ingratiating himself with people. Gumbel's whole demeanor is that of a guy who has read The Rules (that best-selling dating guide that preaches getting love by remaining aloof) and applied them to his professional life. Interview Gumbel and you could find him telling you, politely enough, that he needs to work during your chat. Then he might type on his computer or peruse his American Express bill.

Gumbel does not believe in pursuing guests hotly either. He refers, with a touch of disdain, to the moment in 1995 when journalists were competing for an on-air interview with Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley. "Diane, Oprah, Barbara, Stone all struggled for that interview," Gumbel notes. "When one of them lands it, to what extent has his or her capacity to possibly engender the person's anger been compromised? By agreeing to be on, that person has in a sense granted the reporter a favor." He continues, "Will I make a phone call [to help secure a guest]? Sure, but I'm not about to camp out on the doorstep of every member of the royal family." Moreover, he says, he never has and never will agree to stay off certain subjects with an interviewee. "Don't ever tell me I can't do something."

Gumbel's tactic for dealing with the Princess Diana story, incidentally, was to call her brother, the former Today show correspondent Earl Spencer, and say, "Look, I know everybody is over there asking you to be on their shows. I just want to tell you what I'm doing. If and when you choose to speak and you want to avail yourself of the opportunity, sure, I'd love to have you on, but I'm not going to browbeat you."

That sort of approach may be greatly appreciated by Spencer or any of the dozens of other wealthy and powerful personalities with whom Gumbel, like any celebrity journalist, is acquainted. But a newsmagazine cannot subsist on a diet of such interviews alone, and the truth is that the competition for guests of every stripe has become awfully fierce.

"It's not like the old days," laments Rand Morrison, senior broadcast producer on Public Eye and a 48 Hours veteran. "Now everyone's been on TV. It's not a lure. You'll call someone, and they'll say, 'You're the fifth person who's called me.' There's an astonishing level of sophistication too. People are in on the mechanism. They're like, 'Are you picking me up [for the show in a limo]?'" Winning a guest, adds senior editorial producer Nancy Duffy, "ultimately boils down to that person's sense of nostalgia, who they've watched on TV and who they think they'll click with."

But none of this is to say the future of Public Eye is gloomy. As a genre, the newsmagazine has done very well over the past few years (Dateline NBC now airs four times a week), drawing a large and loyal viewership, mostly women in their 50s and older. And Gumbel is quick to remind naysayers that 20/20 used to air opposite Dallas. J.R. is long gone, and Hugh Downs is still here. Are you listening, Drew Carey?