David Bohrman, the veteran news producer and executive who worked for ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, Current TV and most notably CNN, has died. He was 69.
Bohrman died Sunday of complications from hip surgery, his family told CNN.
Known as a news innovator, Bohrman created dozens of programs over his six-decade career and was widely credited for introducing cutting-edge technology to news broadcasts, including interactive video walls, 3D holograms and real-time visualizations. Among the many news programs he created for CNN was state of the nation, Warroom with Wolf Blitzer, MoneyLine News Hour with Lou Dobbs And News Night with Aaron Brown.
Bohrman was born in Los Angeles in 1954 to Delle, a television writer, and Stan, a television news anchor at CBS KPIX in San Francisco. Stan Bohrman made his mark on television news using KPIX’s “Instant Eye” feature, the then groundbreaking introduction of live camera remotes. “The Instant Eyes, which were live remote cameras, opened up a whole new world of coverage for the city,” Bohrman said in a 2018 interview. “He was just great on the air, a great broadcaster,” Bohrman said of his father.
Bohrman studied at Stanford University and then at Columbia University. While at Stanford, he did an internship at his father’s ward. His first job out of college was at CBS News, where he worked as a producer at local broadcaster KNXT (now KCBS) from 1978-1980. He then went to ABC News and stayed with the company until 1993. During Bohrman’s time at ABC News, he was one of the first employees of the Ted Koppel front night line and rose to become the station’s executive producer. His reputation as an innovator was cemented at ABC News during the 1988 presidential election when he developed the ABC News Interactive product, which was the first to electronically link election information.
In 1993, Bohrman joined NBC News, where he worked as an executive producer on special events. Bohrman worked closely with the station’s star presenters, Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams, and his responsibilities included live and breaking news coverage.
Bohrman joined CNN in 1998, his first stint at the cable news network lasting two years. He was a producer at CNNfn, the now-defunct financial network, and helped create it MoneyLine News Hour with Lou Dobbs. In 2000 he left CNN to become CEO of Pseudo Programs, the world’s first interactive streaming TV network. However, the company failed as the tech industry was in decline due to the bursting of the dot-com bubble. In 2001 he returned to CNN and created News Night with Aaron Brown.
During the 9/11 terrorist attack, Bohrman produced Aaron Brown’s live reporting from New York, including live footage of the towers collapsing behind the anchor in what ranks among the most watched news clips in history. He also produced the station’s coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2004, Bohrman moved to Washington DC to become CNN’s bureau chief in the capital. During this time he produced shows for Wolf Blitzer, John King, Anderson Cooper and Candy Crowley.
During the 2008 presidential election, Bohrman’s drive for innovation continued when he introduced the “magic wall” to CNN’s election coverage. Now a staple of election nights in television news studios around the world, CNN’s Magic Wall was a real-time interactive display updated with election information. “His decision was to adopt and integrate the then emerging touchscreen technology [it] The inclusion of our coverage of the 2008 election was nothing short of revolutionary. And it wasn’t just cutting-edge technology. David turned an old bus into a rolling television studio and took our political reporting to every corner of America. He made us better,” John King said in a statement to CNN.
There’s more to come…
