Photos courtesy of Deirdre Bryant

By Steve Sears

Deirdre Bryant recalls that early November day in 2015 when she gave her final news report for ABC Radio Network, said a farewell to her listeners, and left the microphone for the last time after 34 years of delivering national news.

“I just decided it was time to move on to an other phase of my life,” Bryant says. “A number of my friends came up along with my husband, and they came into the studio with me for the final newscast, and I just signed off for the last time. The microphone went off and they all cheered and clapped, and it was great to have them there. I always loved what I did, and was always learning something all the time. But it was like, “This has been a really good run, and now it’s time to move on.”

Bryant hails from Michigan, and attended Western Michigan University for journalism and theater. But eventually, she came to radio. Prior to starting graduate studies at Penn State University, that summer she applied at ABC, CBS, and NBC, and CBS hired her after a typing test. “They took me over to the broadcast center on 57th Street, and I walked in and someone met me at the door, and I followed him in. All of a sudden, I was standing in the middle of the CBS network newsroom.” After meeting legendary newscaster, Walter Cronkite, she was interviewed by a manager and had her summer job as a billing clerk. While she toiled in the combined television and radio newsroom, she was encouraged – due to her experience of editing her college newspaper and her love of journalism – by CBS News Radio Correspondent, Reid Collins, to give broadcasting a try. An engineer then allowed her to write her own news script and record it, and she held on to the tape.

After graduate school, she headed back to New York City and was, in her words, ‘torn between journalism and theater,” and had also done work in television commercials. Her first job on the air was for WRNJ in Hackettstown. She back then did a Sunday week in review of the news, and was also working as producer in New York City. After eight months of doing both, she desired to be on air full-time, so she joined WHWH\WPST in Princeton. “I was there for almost two years and ABC was an affiliate, and I heard this woman, Geri Hamilton, and said, ‘There’s a woman doing the network news. I think I can do that.’ She sent her tape to ABC, and she heard back several months later. She was told they needed a Boston based anchor, but Bryant told them she was getting married and couldn’t move to Boston. So, she was told to come to the studio New York where she was handed a script, and she read the copy on the air. They loved it, and she was offered a fill-in position for the summer only. “To me, it was a foot in the door,” Bryant said.

At the end of the summer, when there was a hiring freeze and no new personnel came on board, Bryant was there to cover shifts. Also, ABC was starting to expand their

affiliate radio stations, so Bryant was in the right place at the right time. “This was the 1980’s, and it was really sort of the height of radio news, because at that time stations had to carry radio news, and would usually affiliate with a network such as ABC, CBS, NBC, or Mutual,” Bryant says. “ABC created networks that catered to different radio formats (All News, Middle of the Road, Country, Rock, etc.), and they were really tailoring news type deliveries to different types of radio stations. It was a very interesting time in radio, and, of course, then everything started to change when the internet came along and you had deregulation, you had cable internet, and people were able to get their news from different sources. It became much more competitive and got scaled down a bit, so I felt fortunate to have been able to continue for all those years.”

For Bryant, the happiest news report she delivered is when baby Jessica McClure was rescued from a well in Texas. “We followed that story around the clock, and it was one of those moments when everyone was really glued to radio,” Bryant recalls. “When they went down there and they were able to pull her out and she survived, we were just all so elated at that point. If you look at the stories that were really devastating, one was 9/11, and then before that certainly was the Challenger explosion.”

Bryant has been married for 41 years to Norman Worth, and the couple are parents of a son, Armando, and a daughter, Yoli. Always a lover of the arts, Bryant takes part in dance, has performed at Centenary University, and most recently was involved with Rutherfurd Hall, where she co-chaired a May 2022 celebration of the arts. She also does voiceovers for commercials, and has hosted fundraisers for the Hackettstown Medical Center and the ARC of Warren County.

“I hope to just continue on working in the arts,” Bryant says. “That’s really where my heart is right now. Whether it’s for me or highlighting other artists, that’s where I am right now – just really trying to enjoy my friends and enjoy life.”