Bruce DuMont, known as the host of Beyond the Beltway and founder of Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications, has died. DuMont’s career spanned talk and investigative radio at WGN-AM, WLTD, and WBEZ, and award-winning television work.
After covering city and state politics, DuMont launched the weekly radio roundtable program Inside Politics in 1980, which evolved into the nationally syndicated Beyond the Beltway. At its height, the program reached nearly 50 radio markets, SiriusXM, and several television outlets. He stepped away from the show in January due to health issues.
In 1987, he founded the Museum of Broadcast Communications, which became home to the Radio Hall of Fame and a landmark institution chronicling radio and television’s legacy.
Radio Ink Owner and Chairman Eric Rhoads said, “Bruce’s was a brilliant visionary with an impossible dream, which he managed to accomplish in order to honor radios past. His persistence and relentless ability to build the Radio Hall of Fame and the Museum of Broadcast Communications was magical to observe. He was a true genius and a friend whom I’ll miss dearly.”
His family requests donations in his honor be made to the Museum of Broadcast Communications or Columbia College.
