José Antonio Cepero Brito Duarte

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Prestigious conductor and host of Cuban television. He gained renown for his work in television programs such as Escriba y Lea and the Noticiero Nacional de Televisión.

He was born in Manacas, Las Villas. Still a teenager, he worked in various trades to earn his living: he was a locomotive fireman at Central Washington and, years later, an office clerk at the Estrella sugar mill in Camagüey.

In 1939 he moved to La Habana, where he worked as an accumulator technician and filled in at small radio stations.

His first role in radio was as an announcer, reading commercials and presenting musical performances.

In September 1940, when the title of radio announcer was officially established, he was the first Cuban announcer to be evaluated, with an official exam that included tests of elementary grammar and practical diction exercises. After successfully passing the test, Cepero Brito was registered on the list of new professionals, with title number five.

On December 19, 1945, the radio station CMQ hired him as its exclusive announcer. The exclusivity arrangement was granted by the owners of the most important broadcasting stations of the time to announcers of recognized professionalism and excellence; but in exchange for great benefits and high compensation, they were prohibited from working at other stations. From then on, Cepero Brito began what would be a notable career as an announcer and host in Cuban broadcasting.

In the early 1950s, when CMQ Televisión was inaugurated experimentally, Cepero Brito was one of its founders. From that date, his work was directed much more toward television than radio. In television, he cultivated the versatility that allowed him to venture into almost all branches of his profession.

He was a commercial announcer, narrator of soap operas, news announcer, panel moderator, and celebrated host.
When the Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959, Cepero Brito showed his sympathies for the process beginning on the Island and spoke openly in its favor. On September 13, 1960, at a meeting held at the Teatro Martí regarding the intervention of the CMQ consortium, he confirmed his support for the revolutionary government.

In the 1960s his voice accompanied many of the country's most significant patriotic events. Among them stands out his narration of the mercenary invasion at Playa Girón in April 1961, when he kept reporting the details of the battles through television until the conflict ended in victory.

Among the television programs in which he worked, the popular program Detrás de la fachada earned him the admiration of the television audience. This was a weekly humorous program, with scripts by Marcos Behmaras, that began in the late 1950s. The fiction of Detrás de la fachada took place in a large apartment building where scenes from the daily lives of the tenants unfolded.

At first, Cepero Brito worked opposite Mimí Cal, one of the great actresses of Cuban comedy, but in 1957 Consuelito Vidal joined the program's cast. The visible chemistry and histrionic talent that emerged from the Cepero Brito-Vidal duo, combined with their improvisational skills, allowed the scriptwriters to alternate the positions of both narrators, to the point where Cepero Brito served as the straight man and Consuelo Vidal delivered the jokes. The high ratings they obtained kept the program on the air for more than twenty years.

Another television program that made this host famous was Escriba y Lea, of which he was a founder. The program (still active in Cubavisión's weekly programming), features a panel of university professors who must identify characters, works, places, or historically significant facts of worldwide relevance through questions suggested by the television audience. The founding panelists of the program, along with Cepero Brito, were doctors Gustavo Du Bouchet, Humberto Galis Menéndez, and María Dolores Ortiz, who remains in the cast to this day. From its beginnings, Escriba y Lea achieved great popularity and prestige, due to its interactive nature and its harmonious combination of culture and entertainment, and marked a definitive milestone in Cepero Brito's career as a host.

Another television program that served as a special showcase for him was the Noticiero Nacional de Televisión, considered the mecca of Cuban announcing for the professionalism it demands. His performance in this space was memorable, and even today it is cited as an example for new generations of Cuban announcers.

In 1979, Cepero Brito hosted the Concurso Adolfo Guzmán, along with Germán Pinelli. Both, along with Consuelo Vidal, are recognized as the trilogy of the greatest hosts and presenters in Cuban media of all time.

José Antonio Cepero Brito passed away in La Habana in 1989.