Tom Brokaw Talks Battling Incurable Blood Cancer on CBS Sunday Morning: ‘I’ve Had a Bad Experience’

NBC News stalwart Tom Brokaw is doing some of his deepest confessional talking this Sunday via CBS News.

Brokaw talks to longtime friend Jane Pauley, who anchors CBS News Sunday Morning, and tells her about his battle with incurable blood cancer, which he has been fighting for a decade. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma ten years ago.

Ive had a bad experience, Brokaw tells Pauley of his illness. I kept thinking bad things wouldnt happen to me. But as I grew older, I began to develop this condition. And what you try to do is control it as much as you can. He says doctors did not think he would make it to his current age, 83 years.

He says the disease forced him to walk away from NBC News, even as he enjoyed a sort of elder-statesman position there after his exit from anchoring NBC Nightly News, where he held forth from 1982 to 2004.

Ive had to change my life in some way, he tells Pauley. I really had to give up my daily activity with NBC. You know, I had to walk away from them, as they were walking away from me. I just wasnt the same person. And so for the first time in my life, I was kind of out there, you know, in a place I had never been in my life.

Brokaw and Pauley co-hosted NBCs Today morning program between 1976 and 1981. The interview is expected to air this Sunday on CBS and also stream for subscribers to Paramount+.