Bobby Rivers
SAG/AFTRA

photo by Michael Timmons

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Veteran network TV performer Bobby Rivers has a smart, comical style that earned him solid reviews from The New York Times, People Magazine, TV Guide and even Tom Hanks.  Rivers also pushed to get the kind of work denied African-Americans when he was a youngster growing up in 1960s South Los Angeles.  On national TV, he’s been an entertainment correspondent, a movie critic, a weeknight celebrity talk show host and a game show host.

The oldest of three and a child of divorced parents, he made his first TV appearance during his Catholic high school years.  Classic films are his passion.  The teen talked his way into a contestant audition in Hollywood for a new show called “The Movie Game.”  He passed the audition and became the show’s youngest and only African-American winner.  Upon graduation from Marquette University, he started his broadcast career in Milwaukee.

After interviews, Rose Marie (of “The Dick Van Dyke Show”) and Robin Williams urged him to let his personality out and forget about being a standard news reporter.  Bobby used their advice on PM Magazine, a popular syndicated show in the 1980s.   Some of his funny lifestyle features aired nationally.  Also nationally, he was the first black male to be seen on PM Magazine doing interviews of stars such as Meryl Streep, Sally Field, Jessica Lange and Ben Kingsley.  Locally, on the ABC affiliate, he was Milwaukee’s first African-American to be a weekly film critic. 

In 1985, he landed a news job on WPIX TV in New York.  Two years later, he was a veejay on VH1 where he got his own prime time celebrity talk show.  He followed three years on VH1 with host work on two summer replacement game shows.  Starting in 1992, he was a local New York City morning news show fixture doing liveshots and entertainment reports for WNBC and, later, Fox’s WNYW.  In 2000, he was tapped to be the film critic on “Lifetime Live,” a Lifetime TV magazine show from ABC News.  He hosted “Top 5” on Food Network in 2002.  In 2006, he returned to film reviews and getting laughs.  This time with Whoopi Goldberg on her national morning radio show which lasted until 2008.

He was a contributor to Entertainment Weekly magazine.  He has acted on “The Sopranos,” “Guiding Light,” in national commercials and segments for the satirical news website, TheOnion.com.  He’s done volunteer work and helped raise money for God’s Love We Deliver and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.  He served for a year on the Screen Actors Guild New York board of directors. Oddly, for most of his TV career, Rivers could not get broadcast agent attention.  He proves you can book network jobs without the luxury of representation.