Cunniff worked for The Today Show in the mid-1960s, with Hugh Downs and Barbara Walters, and with Dick Cavett on The Dick Cavett Show and later Cavett broadcasts in the 1980s and 1990s. He is well known for booking Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal on the same show, with the elderly, mild-mannered New Yorker writer Janet Flanner as "referee". The following year, he became the managing editor of Good Morning, America. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Cunniff died on January 20, 2008 in Brooklyn, New York City after a long illness.