Bryant Gumbel and Gwen Ifill are here this morning for breakfast with the critics to talk about their new PBS show, "Flashpoints USA." The show premieres Tuesday (10 p.m., Channel 12) and its first episode will look at the ongoing tug-of-war between security concerns and civil liberties in the wake of Sept. 11.

Serious stuff, and there's some back and forth about the show, but what a lot of people seem more interested in is the former "Early Show" host's 55-pound weight loss. Maybe it's just that we're eating eggs Benedict - and trying not to spill hollandaise sauce on our notebooks and tape recorders - and we're hoping he'll tell us he lost it on an all-eggs Benedict-all-the-time regimen. Maybe it's that we know that the show, one of four that Gumbel and Ifill are scheduled to make in the coming year, will air in most markets opposite the All-Star game and that talking about Gumbel's waistline might add a little juice to the story (even Bryant won't say that he'd choose his show over watching the game, pointing out that he has "Flashpoints" on tape already).

So is there news here you or I could use? Fat chance.

Gumbel, it seems, did it the old-fashioned way: He quit his full-time job and "just became kind of a gym rat," spending two hours a day working out. "And I try to watch what I eat."

Thanks, guy. Huge help.

On a more serious note, when both Ifill and Gumbel, who are African-American, were asked if they'd ever been the subject of racial profiling, Ifill said that she assumed that she had, since she'd been "followed in stores by people saying, 双h, she must be here to steal things.'"

Gumbel?

"I actually get the double whammy, which is I get the assumption of guilt and then, when they realize who I am, I get the fawning apology, which is twice as insulting. In terms of being pulled over in a car, it doesn't happen to me, I guess, because for the last 30 years of so, I've been in the back of the car," he said.