New CBS Atlanta reporter’s resume: ‘The Daily Show,’ ‘Yellowstone,’ NPR
Brian Unger has had a colorfully peripatetic career as a producer, humorist, reporter and actor on shows as varied as “The Daily Show,” “Yellowstone” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”
At age 60, Unger has now started a new chapter as a reporter on the new CBS News Atlanta.
“It’s been the most gratifying third or fourth act of my career I could ever imagine,” he said. “It’s an affirmation that I belong in the field telling stories. After all these years, I have to admit to myself that this is what I’m the best at.”
In 2021, Unger moved with his husband and former child actor Nicholas Phillips from Los Angeles to Cherokee County and purchased a 10-acre farm. They now own seven horses, 15 dogs, a dozen chickens, 20-plus pigeons and a single cat, named Ash.
“We were literally seeking greener pastures,” Unger said. “In Los Angeles, we were constantly under a fire alert. Here, it’s lush, damp and wet. We like it.”
In recent years, he has earned a living largely as a TV producer, most recently on the A&E house hunting show “48 Hours to Buy.” He has also dabbled in acting.
But his itch for journalism never left him. When the Southeast Emmys invited him to host earlier this year, he said yes. At the event in June, WSB-TV anchor Jorge Estevez told him Gray Media’s WANF-TV was going independent, necessitating CBS to use its own station, WUPA-TV, to start a news operation from scratch. Dozens of jobs were available.
Intrigued, Unger decided to apply.
“When this opportunity opened up, I thought, ‘This is where I want to land,’“ he said. “I live here now. This is where I want to explore.”
Although Unger occasionally covers breaking news, CBS News Atlanta has given him leeway to create his own quirky 3-minute vignettes. He has profiled a Georgia Tech man who wants to send people’s cremated remains into space, an all-Black Atlanta high school polo team and a Ball Ground restaurant touting a “life changing sandwich.”
“I’m mobile, shooting, writing, editing and feeding stories back to CBS wherever I am,” he said. “I’m never standing still.”
CBS Atlanta news director Shawn Hoder said getting someone of Unger’s caliber is a coup.
“Brian may be one of the most talented storytellers in the business,” Hoder said. “He is smart and clever, and he has a great eye. But he also has that one important thing that we seek in hiring anyone for our station: passion. I cannot teach passion. Brian exudes it.”
Hoder raved about a piece Hoder did on a Black man nicknamed the “urban cowboy” charged with animal cruelty who likes to ride horses in Atlanta. He also enjoyed Unger’s story about Oakland Cemetery offering plots for the first time in 145 years.
Unger said at his age, he is not using this job as a steppingstone for a bigger gig. Rather, he wants to mentor the staff and help CBS News Atlanta build a following, a challenge in the face of shrinking broadcast audiences more apt to catch news on their social media feeds.
“I feel lucky I got to experience the salad days of both network news and cable,” he said. “Now I feel lucky to be part of something new. … At age 60, I don’t feel it. I feel 40. It’s a hustle, and I haven’t missed a beat. I feel every bit as energetic as I did when I was a cub producer.”
Unger’s career has had no shortage of twists and turns.
An Ohio native and Ohio University graduate, Unger in his early 20s moved to New York City and cold-called CBS’ “Late Night with David Letterman” in 1986. He bonded with the receptionist, who went to the same college, and talked his way into an internship.
“I was terrified of Letterman,” Unger recalled. “But I was quiet and didn’t seem to be trying to get a job there. So I did his Christmas shopping. I sat in his apartment for three days waiting for the cable guy. I got his lunch every day.”
He then landed a job producing news for CBS News, inspired by mentors like Connie Chung and Charles Kuralt. In 1994, he became a correspondent for a new syndicated CBS News newsmagazine, “Day & Date.” He covered the O.J. Simpson case, which was both exhilarating and exhausting, and he was soon seeking new opportunities.
At the time, his friend Lizz Winstead and former “Letterman” boss Madeleine Smithberg were seeking correspondents for a news satire show dubbed “The Daily Show” for Comedy Central. They hired Unger because he had news experience and a good sense of humor.
“He was really disgusted with the way television news was evolving,” Smithberg said. “He felt like on-camera talent was making it all about themselves. This became the initial crux of the show: pretending to be the media. Brian should have gotten creative credit.”
Smithberg said Unger’s very first field piece for “The Daily Show” set the tone: profiling a woman mourning the death of her TV commercial cat Princess Kitty with the gravitas of reporting the death of Princess Diana.
“To this day, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen,” Smithberg said. “When he brought it back, I almost wept. It was pure beautiful satire.” (The Hollywood Reporter at the time dubbed Unger’s piece “cleverly straight faced.”)
He did a regular segment called “tricks of the trade” pulling open the curtain of newsmagazine tropes and breaking that fourth wall: “He’d show a swing set which looks fine, then he’d make it black and white and slow motion and suddenly, it’s frightening and sad,” Winstead said. “He’d bleep someone when they didn’t need to be bleeped to make it sound like they were being a jerk.”
Unfortunately, his “Daily Show” work is absent online, and Unger’s contribution to the show was reduced to a passing reference in a 2016 oral history of “The Daily Show.”
“It’s a shame and super weird,” Winstead said, of the omission of Unger’s contribution to the show. “He was a powerhouse.”
When Craig Kilborn was given a late night show in 1999, Unger was in the running to replace him as host. But Comedy Central execs chose Jon Stewart, who showed promise with his MTV talk show “The Jon Stewart Show.”
Unger subsequently left the show. Whatever bitterness he felt has been softened by the passage of time and the show’s enduring success under Stewart’s tutelage.
“I’m really proud of the show’s journey,” Unger said. “It was like watching a child grow up and become a Rhodes scholar.”
Unger tried to recapture the “Daily Show” magic in other places. A similar show on the Fox broadcast network never got picked up. He and Winstead created a “Regis and Kelly” satire on Oxygen that lasted only six episodes.
In 2003, he found a home as resident humorist on NPR’s “Day to Day” program for six years. Dubbed “The Unger Report,” he would poke fun each Monday at anything, from the Iraq War to the iPhone to Paris Hilton to Twitter.
“It’s hard to do humor on the radio,” he said. At the same time, “it was an important growth moment for me to find my own voice and move forward comedically and politically.”
One of his favorites was a bonus commentary he did for “All Things Considered” in 2012 discussing his widowed mom’s burgeoning love life in Florida. “My mom is bare-armed and dangerous,” he said at the time. “She has a whole new body, and she’s lost weight. This Christmas she showed up in a form-fitting workout ensemble from the store Lululemon. I wanted to tell her to go to her room and change.”
Through the 2010s, Unger was able to work steadily with A&E, Travel, History and other basic cable networks. He is most proud of his work with History hosting the series “How the States Got Their Shapes.”
“It became this crazy cross-country road trip,” said the show’s director David Konschnik, whose favorite story was the battle over the border between Tennessee and Georgia. Unger spends time at the now defunct Patricks’ Pub & Grill, where the bar portion is in Copperhill, Tennessee, while the bathroom and kitchen are in the dry city of McCaysville, Georgia.
“It’s party in the front, business in the back,” Unger said on the show.
Despite all his journalistic cred, Unger has also been acting for decades. His IMDb resume includes 26 acting credits on shows ranging from “Reno 911!” to “Masters of Sex.”
He became friends with “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” creator Rob McElhenney while doing a Yoo-Hoo ad and later landed a meaty recurring role as a lawyer on the enduring FX comedy.
While embarking on competitive horse reining 20 years ago, Unger befriended future TV producer Taylor Sheridan, which led to his role as a doctor on Paramount’s “Yellowstone” more than a decade later.
In 2017, he nabbed a regular role on the CBS sitcom “Me Myself and I,” which starred Bobby Moynihan and John Larroquette.
Although the show lasted only 13 episodes, “the entire 360 degree experience was kind of magical,” he said. “I was very conscious of the experience and the sense of bemusement I felt working for CBS a second time, this time on the scripted side.”
Although Unger enjoys connecting with the people he meets in his reporting journeys, he is happy to come home every night to his farm.
“I live in a place that feels almost unreal,” he said. “With regard to its tranquility, its peace, its greenery. … And I need to hear crickets, see fireflies and talk to animals. I just need that.”
About the Author
Rodney Ho writes about entertainment for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution including TV, radio, film, comedy and all things in between. A native New Yorker, he has covered education at The Virginian-Pilot, small business for The Wall Street Journal and a host of beats at the AJC over 20-plus years. He loves tennis, pop culture & seeing live events.
