Herb Bloom, pioneering TV producer

Herbert (Herb) Bloom, a pioneering TV producer and seven-year member of the National Press Club, died May 2.  He was 78 and lived in Washington.

A self-described “boy from the Bronx,” the New York native developed a love for riding horses and collecting southwestern art. 

“As executive producer, he didn’t so much cover the news, rather he choreographed the people who made it reach our living rooms,” said his stepson, David Fox. “Innovative and inquisitive, to say the least, Herb did everything that he could to get the story.”

Bloom graduated from Stuyvesant High School and Yeshiva University and earned a master's degree from Yale University in 1963 under a Danforth scholarship.  He freelanced for the San Francisco Chronicle, Louisville Courier-Journal and Fairchild Publications before getting his first job as a producer in the mid-‘70s for international TV news organizations in Israel. 

He anchored radio programing for the Israeli Broadcasting Authority before returning to the U.S. to work as a producer for WGBH in Boston, a reporter for  WQED in Pittsburgh, a field producer for ABC News and associate producer for the David Susskind Show. From 1977 to 1982 he developed and managed New Jersey's first statewide public TV news program for New Jersey Public Broadcasting and WNET in New York.

After organizing a pioneering 65-person cable news bureau for ABC News and Westinghouse Broadcasting, Bloom because a writer/producer for MacNeil-Lehrer Productions. In 1986, he joined NBC to become executive producer and Washington bureau chief.  He directed reporters, producers and technical crews to provide customized national and international news coverage for NBC stations, including presidential campaigns, the Olympics, U.S.-Soviet summits and major breaking news stories, and guided the network through technological changes.  

Besides his stepson, survivors included his wife Wendy.