60 Minutes is an American news magazine and television program broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt, who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation. In 2002, 60 Minutes was ranked at No. 6 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time[3] and in 2013, it was ranked #24 on TV Guide's 60 Best Series of All Time.[4] The New York Times has called it "one of the most esteemed news magazines on American television
The program employed a magazine format, similar to that of the Canadian program W5, which had premiered two years earlier. It pioneered many of the most important investigative journalism procedures and techniques, including re-editing interviews, hidden cameras, and "gotcha journalism" visits to the home or office of an investigative subject.[7] Similar programs sprang up in Australia and Canada during the 1970s, as well as on local television news.[7]
Initially, 60 Minutes aired as a bi-weekly show hosted by Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace, debuting on September 24, 1968, and alternating weeks with other CBS News productions on Tuesday evenings at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time. The first edition, described by Reasoner in the opening as a "kind of a magazine for television," featured the following segments:
A look inside the headquarters suites of presidential candidates Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey during their respective parties' national conventions that summer;
Commentary by European writers Malcolm Muggeridge, Peter von Zahn, and Luigi Barzini, Jr. on the American electoral system;
A commentary by political columnist Art Buchwald;
An interview with then-Attorney General Ramsey Clark about police brutality;
"A Digression," a brief, scripted piece in which two silhouetted men (one of them Andy Rooney) discuss the presidential campaign;
An abbreviated version of an Academy Award-winning short film by Saul Bass, Why Man Creates; and
A meditation by Wallace and Reasoner on the relation between perception and reality. Wallace said that the show aimed to "reflect reality".
The first "magazine-cover" chroma key was a photo of two helmeted policemen (for the Clark interview segment). Wallace and Reasoner sat in chairs on opposite sides of the set, which had a cream-colored backdrop; the more famous black backdrop (which is still used as of 2017) did not appear until the following year. The logo was in Helvetica type with the word "Minutes" spelled in all lower-case letters; the logo most associated with the show (rendered in Eurostile type with "Minutes" spelled in uppercase) did not appear until about 1974. Further, to extend the magazine motif, the producers added a "Vol. xx, No. xx" to the title display on the chroma key; modeled after the volume and issue number identifications featured in print magazines, this was used until about 1971. The trademark stopwatch, however, did not appear on the inaugural broadcast; it would not debut until several episodes later. Alpo dog food was the sole sponsor of the first program.[2]
Don Hewitt, who had been a producer of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, sought out Wallace as a stylistic contrast to Reasoner.[8] According to one historian of the show, the idea of the format was to make the hosts the reporters, to always feature stories that were of national importance but focused upon individuals involved with, or in conflict with, those issues, and to limit the reports' airtime to around 13 minutes.[8] However, the initial season was troubled by lack of network confidence, as the program did not garner ratings much higher than that of other CBS News documentaries. As a rule, during that era, news programming during prime time lost money; networks mainly scheduled public affairs programs in prime time in order to bolster the prestige of their news departments, and thus boost ratings for the regular evening newscasts, which were seen by far more people than documentaries and the like. 60 Minutes struggled under that stigma during its first three years.
Changes to 60 Minutes came fairly early in the program's history. When Reasoner left CBS to co-anchor ABC's evening newscast (he would return to CBS and 60 Minutes in 1978), Morley Safer joined the team in 1970, and he took over Reasoner's duties of reporting less aggressive stories. However, when Richard Nixon began targeting press access and reporting, even Safer, formerly the CBS News bureau chief in Saigon and London, began to do "hard" investigative reports, and during the 1970–1971 season alone 60 Minutes reported on cluster bombs, the South Vietnamese Army, draft dodgers, Nigeria, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland.[9]
Effects from the Prime Time Access Rule
By 1971, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) introduced the Prime Time Access Rule, which freed local network affiliates in the top 50 markets (in practice, the entire network) to take a half-hour of prime time from the networks on Mondays through Saturdays and one full hour on Sundays. Because nearly all affiliates found production costs for the FCC's intended goal of increased public affairs programming very high and the ratings (and by association, advertising revenues) low, making it mostly unprofitable, the FCC created an exception for network-authored news and public affairs shows. After a six-month hiatus in late 1971, CBS found a prime place for 60 Minutes in a portion of that displaced time, 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Eastern (5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Central Time) on Sundays in January 1972.[9]
This proved somewhat less than satisfactory, however, because in order to accommodate CBS' telecasts of late afternoon National Football League (NFL) football games, 60 Minutes went on hiatus during the fall from 1972 to 1975 (and the summer of 1972). This took place because football telecasts were protected contractually from interruptions in the wake of the infamous "Heidi Bowl" incident on NBC in November 1968. Despite the irregular scheduling, the program's hard-hitting reports attracted a steadily growing audience, particularly during the waning days of the Vietnam War and the gripping events of the Watergate scandal; at that time, few if any other major network news shows did in-depth investigative reporting to the degree carried out by 60 Minutes. Eventually, during the summers of 1973 through 1975, CBS did allow the program back onto the prime time schedule proper, on Fridays in 1973 and Sundays the two years thereafter, as a replacement for programs aired during the regular television season.
It was only when the FCC returned an hour to the networks on Sundays (for news or family programming), which had been taken away from them four years earlier, in a 1975 amendment to the Access Rule, that CBS finally found a viable permanent timeslot for 60 Minutes. When a family-oriented drama, Three for the Road, ended after a 12-week run in the fall, the newsmagazine took its place at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time (6:00 p.m. Central) on December 7, 1975. It has aired at that time since for 42 years as of 2017, making 60 Minutes not only the longest-running prime time program currently in production, but also the television program (excluding daily programs such as evening newscasts or morning news-talk shows) broadcasting for the longest length of time at a single time period each week in U.S. television history.[citation needed]
This move, and the addition of then-White House correspondent Dan Rather to the reporting team, made the program into a strong ratings hit and, eventually, a general cultural phenomenon. This was no less than a stunning reversal of the historically poor ratings performances of documentary programs on network television. By 1976, 60 Minutes became the top-rated program on Sunday nights in the U.S. By 1979, it had achieved the #1 spot among all television programs in the Nielsen ratings, unheard of before for a news broadcast in prime time. This success translated into great profits for CBS, advertising rates went from $17,000 per 30-second spot in 1975 to $175,000 in 1982.[10]
The program sometimes does not start until after 7:00 p.m. Eastern, due largely to CBS' live broadcast of NFL games. At the conclusion of an NFL game, 60 Minutes will air in its entirety. However, on the West Coast (and all of the Mountain Time Zone), because the actual end of the live games is much earlier in the afternoon in comparison to the Eastern and Central time zones, 60 Minutes is always able to start at its normal start time of 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time, leaving affiliates free to broadcast local news, the CBS Evening News, and other local or syndicated programming leading up to 60 Minutes. The program's success has also led CBS Sports to schedule events (such as the final round of the Masters Tournament and the second round and regional final games of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament) leading into 60 Minutes and the rest of the network's primetime lineup, thus (again, except on the West Coast) pre-empting the Sunday editions of the CBS Evening News and affiliates' local newscasts.
Starting in the 2012–2013 season, in order to accompany a new NFL rule that the second game of an NFL doubleheader start at 4:25 p.m., CBS officially changed the start time of 60 Minutes to 7:30 p.m. Eastern time on Sundays in Eastern and Central Time Zone markets when there is an NFL doubleheader scheduled to air (there are nine doubleheaders during the NFL season – eight during the first 16 weeks of the season, and the final week) to protect against overruns. The start time remains at 7:00 p.m. Eastern time in markets where only a single game is set to air (markets that have only a 1:00 p.m. Eastern time game on single game weeks, and in markets where a home team's NFL game is on Fox at 4:05 p.m., meaning CBS cannot air a doubleheader because of restrictions imposed by the NFL).[11]
Pre-emptions since 1978
The program has rarely been pre-empted since 1978. Two notable pre-emptions occurred in 1976 and 1977, to make room for the annual telecast of The Wizard of Oz, which had recently returned to CBS after having been shown on NBC for eight years. However, CBS would, in later years, schedule the film so that it would no longer pre-empt 60 Minutes. Another exception is on years when CBS airs the Super Bowl or since 2003, alternating, odd-numbered years where the AFC Championship Game has the 6:30 p.m. Eastern start time, which is played into prime-time and followed by a special lead-out program.[citation needed]
On September 22, 2013, CBS chose to pre-empt 60 Minutes as a result of carrying the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards after an NFL doubleheader.[12]
Radio broadcast and Internet distribution
60 Minutes is also simulcast on several former CBS Radio flagship stations now owned by Entercom (such as KYW in Philadelphia, WCBS in New York City, WBBM in Chicago, WWJ in Detroit and KCBS in San Francisco) when it airs locally on their sister CBS Television Network affiliate; even in the Central and Eastern time zones, the show is aired at the top of the hour at 7:00 p.m./6:00 p.m. Central (barring local sports play-by-play pre-emptions and breaking news coverage) no matter how long the show is delayed on CBS Television, resulting in radio listeners often hearing the show on those stations ahead of the television broadcast. An audio version of each broadcast without advertising began to be distributed via podcast and the iTunes Store, starting with the September 23, 2007 broadcast.[13] Video from 60 Minutes (including full episodes) is also made available for streaming several hours after the program's initial broadcast on CBSNews.com and CBS All Access.
Format
60 Minutes consists of three long-form news stories, without superimposed graphics. There is a commercial break between two stories. Each story is introduced from a set with a backdrop resembling pages from a magazine story on the same topic. The program undertakes its own investigations and follows up on investigations instigated by national newspapers and other sources. Unlike its most famous competitor 20/20 as well as traditional local and national news programs, the 60 Minutes journalists never share the screen with (or speak to) other 60 Minutes journalists on camera at any time. This creates a strong psychological sense of intimacy between the journalist and the television viewer.
Reporting tone
60 Minutes blends the probing journalism of the seminal 1950s CBS series See It Now with Edward R. Murrow (a show for which Hewitt served as the director for its first few years) and the personality profiles of another Murrow program, Person to Person. In Hewitt's own words, 60 Minutes blends "higher Murrow" and "lower Murrow".[14]
"Point/Counterpoint" segment
For most of the 1970s, the program included Point/Counterpoint, in which a liberal and a conservative commentator debated a particular issue. This segment originally featured James J. Kilpatrick representing the conservative side and Nicholas von Hoffman[15] for the liberal, with Shana Alexander[16] taking over for von Hoffman after he departed in 1974.[15] The segment was an innovation that caught the public imagination as a live version of competing editorials. In 1979, Alexander asked Hewitt to raise the pay of $350 a week, Hewitt declined, and the segment ended.[15]
Point/Counterpoint was also lampooned by the NBC comedy series Saturday Night Live, which featured Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd as debaters, with Aykroyd announcing the topic, Curtin making an opening statement, then Aykroyd typically retorting with, "Jane, you ignorant slut" and Curtin with "Dan, you pompous ass".[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] In the 1980 film Airplane!, in which the faux Kilpatrick argues in favor of the plane crashing stating "they bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into"; and in the earlier sketch comedy film, The Kentucky Fried Movie, where the segment was called "Count/Pointercount".
A similar concept was revived briefly in March 2003, this time featuring Bob Dole and Bill Clinton, former opponents in the 1996 presidential election. The pair agreed to do ten segments, called "Clinton/Dole" and "Dole/Clinton" in alternating weeks, but did not continue into the 2003–2004 fall television season. Reports indicated that the segments were considered too gentlemanly, in the style of the earlier "Point/Counterpoint", and lacked the feistiness of Crossfire.[25]
Andy Rooney segment
From 1978 to 2011, the program usually ended with a (usually light-hearted and humorous) commentary by Andy Rooney expounding on topics of wildly varying import, ranging from international politics, to economics, and to personal philosophy on everyday life. One recurring topic was measuring the amount of coffee in coffee cans.[26]
Rooney's pieces, particularly one in which he referred to actor Mel Gibson as a "wacko", on occasion led to complaints from viewers. In 1990, Rooney was suspended without pay for three months by then-CBS News President David Burke, because of the negative publicity around his saying that "too much alcohol, too much food, drugs, homosexual unions, cigarettes [are] all known to lead to premature death."[27] He wrote an explanatory letter to a gay organization after being ordered not to do so. After only four weeks without Rooney, 60 Minutes lost 20% of its audience. CBS management then decided that it was in the best interest of the network to have Rooney return immediately.[28]
Rooney published several books documenting his contributions to the program, including Years Of Minutes and A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney. Rooney retired from 60 Minutes, delivering his final commentary on October 2, 2011, it was his 1,097th commentary over his 34-year career on the program. He died one month later on November 4, 2011. The November 13, 2011 edition of 60 Minutes featured an hour-long tribute to Rooney and his career, and included a rebroadcast of his final commentary segment.
Opening sequence
The opening sequence features a 60 Minutes "magazine cover" with the show's trademark, an Aristo stopwatch, intercut with preview clips of the episode's stories. The sequence ends with each of the current correspondents and hosts introducing themselves. The last host who appears (currently Bill Whitaker) then says, "Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes". When Rooney was a prominent fixture, the final line was "Those stories and Andy Rooney, tonight on 60 Minutes". Before that, and whenever Rooney did not appear, the final line was "Those stories and more, tonight on 60 Minutes".
60 Minutes was the first, and remains the only, regularly scheduled program in the U.S. to never have used theme music.[citation needed] The only "theme" is the ticking of the stopwatch, which counts off each of the broadcast's titular 60 minutes, starting from zero at the beginning of each show. It is seen during the opening title sequence, before each commercial break, and at the tail-end of the closing credits, and each time it appears it displays (within reasonable accuracy) the elapsed time of the episode to that point.
On October 29, 2006, the opening sequence changed from a black background, which had been used for over a decade, to white. Also, the gray background for the Aristo stopwatch in the "cover" changed to red, the color for the title text changed to white, and the stopwatch itself changed from the diagonal position it had been oriented in for 31 years to an upright position.[citation needed]
Web content
Videos and transcripts of 60 Minutes editions, as well as clips that were not included in the broadcast are available on the program's website. In September 2010, the program launched a website called "60 Minutes Overtime", in which stories broadcast on-air are discussed in further detail.[29]
iPad content
CBS Interactive released a mobile app in 2013, "60 Minutes for iPad", which allows users to watch 60 Minutes on iPad devices and access some of the show's archival footage.
Correspondents and hosts
Current correspondents and commentators
Current hosts
Lesley Stahl (host, 1991–present, co-editor)
Scott Pelley (host, 2003–present)
Bill Whitaker (host, 2014–present)
John Dickerson (2019–present)
Current part-time correspondents
Anderson Cooper (2006–present) (also at CNN)
Norah O'Donnell (2015–present)
Sharyn Alfonsi (2015–present)
Jon Wertheim (2017–present)
Former correspondents and hosts
Former hosts
Harry Reasoner † (host, 1968–1970 and 1978–1991)
Mike Wallace † (host, 1968–2006; correspondent emeritus 2006–2008)
Morley Safer † (part-time correspondent, 1968–1970; host, 1970–2016)[30]
Dan Rather (part-time correspondent, 1968–1975; host, 1975–1981 and 2005–2006) (now at AXS TV)
Ed Bradley † (part-time correspondent, 1976–1981; host, 1981–2006)[31]
Diane Sawyer (part-time correspondent, 1981–1984; host, 1984–1989) (now at ABC News)
Meredith Vieira (part-time correspondent, 1982–1985 and 1991–1993; host, 1990–1991)
Bob Simon † (1996–2015)[32]
Christiane Amanpour (part-time correspondent, 1996–2000; host, 2000–2005)
Lara Logan (part-time correspondent, 2005–2012; host, 2012–2018)[33]
Steve Kroft (host, 1989–2019; co-editor, 2019)[34]
Former part-time correspondents
Walter Cronkite † (1968–1981)
Charles Kuralt † (1968–1979)
Roger Mudd (1968–1980) (retired)
Bill Plante (1968–1995) (retired)
Eric Sevareid † (1968–1969)
John Hart (1969–1975) (retired)
Bob Schieffer (1973–1996)
Morton Dean (1975–1979) (retired)
Marlene Sanders † (1978–1987)
Charles Osgood (1981–1994) (retired)
Forrest Sawyer (1985–1987)
Connie Chung (1990–1993) (retired)
Paula Zahn (1990–1999)
John Roberts (1992–2005) (now at Fox News Channel)
Russ Mitchell (1995–1998) (now at WKYC in Cleveland)
Carol Marin (1997–2002)[35]
Bryant Gumbel (1998–2002)
Katie Couric (2006–2011)
Charlie Rose (2008–2017)
Byron Pitts (2009–2013)[36] (now at ABC News)
Alison Stewart (2012)
Sanjay Gupta (2011–2014)
Oprah Winfrey (2017–2018)
Commentators
Commentators for 60 Minutes have included:
James J. Kilpatrick † (conservative debater, 1971–1979)
Nicholas von Hoffman † (liberal debater, 1971–1974)
Shana Alexander † (liberal debater, 1975–1979)
Andy Rooney † (commentator, 1978–2011)
Stanley Crouch (commentator, 1996)
Molly Ivins † (liberal commentator, 1996)
P. J. O'Rourke (conservative commentator, 1996)
Bill Clinton (liberal debater, 2003)
Bob Dole (conservative debater, 2003)
The program employed a magazine format, similar to that of the Canadian program W5, which had premiered two years earlier. It pioneered many of the most important investigative journalism procedures and techniques, including re-editing interviews, hidden cameras, and "gotcha journalism" visits to the home or office of an investigative subject.[7] Similar programs sprang up in Australia and Canada during the 1970s, as well as on local television news.[7]
Initially, 60 Minutes aired as a bi-weekly show hosted by Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace, debuting on September 24, 1968, and alternating weeks with other CBS News productions on Tuesday evenings at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time. The first edition, described by Reasoner in the opening as a "kind of a magazine for television," featured the following segments:
A look inside the headquarters suites of presidential candidates Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey during their respective parties' national conventions that summer;
Commentary by European writers Malcolm Muggeridge, Peter von Zahn, and Luigi Barzini, Jr. on the American electoral system;
A commentary by political columnist Art Buchwald;
An interview with then-Attorney General Ramsey Clark about police brutality;
"A Digression," a brief, scripted piece in which two silhouetted men (one of them Andy Rooney) discuss the presidential campaign;
An abbreviated version of an Academy Award-winning short film by Saul Bass, Why Man Creates; and
A meditation by Wallace and Reasoner on the relation between perception and reality. Wallace said that the show aimed to "reflect reality".
The first "magazine-cover" chroma key was a photo of two helmeted policemen (for the Clark interview segment). Wallace and Reasoner sat in chairs on opposite sides of the set, which had a cream-colored backdrop; the more famous black backdrop (which is still used as of 2017) did not appear until the following year. The logo was in Helvetica type with the word "Minutes" spelled in all lower-case letters; the logo most associated with the show (rendered in Eurostile type with "Minutes" spelled in uppercase) did not appear until about 1974. Further, to extend the magazine motif, the producers added a "Vol. xx, No. xx" to the title display on the chroma key; modeled after the volume and issue number identifications featured in print magazines, this was used until about 1971. The trademark stopwatch, however, did not appear on the inaugural broadcast; it would not debut until several episodes later. Alpo dog food was the sole sponsor of the first program.[2]
Don Hewitt, who had been a producer of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, sought out Wallace as a stylistic contrast to Reasoner.[8] According to one historian of the show, the idea of the format was to make the hosts the reporters, to always feature stories that were of national importance but focused upon individuals involved with, or in conflict with, those issues, and to limit the reports' airtime to around 13 minutes.[8] However, the initial season was troubled by lack of network confidence, as the program did not garner ratings much higher than that of other CBS News documentaries. As a rule, during that era, news programming during prime time lost money; networks mainly scheduled public affairs programs in prime time in order to bolster the prestige of their news departments, and thus boost ratings for the regular evening newscasts, which were seen by far more people than documentaries and the like. 60 Minutes struggled under that stigma during its first three years.
Changes to 60 Minutes came fairly early in the program's history. When Reasoner left CBS to co-anchor ABC's evening newscast (he would return to CBS and 60 Minutes in 1978), Morley Safer joined the team in 1970, and he took over Reasoner's duties of reporting less aggressive stories. However, when Richard Nixon began targeting press access and reporting, even Safer, formerly the CBS News bureau chief in Saigon and London, began to do "hard" investigative reports, and during the 1970–1971 season alone 60 Minutes reported on cluster bombs, the South Vietnamese Army, draft dodgers, Nigeria, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland.[9]
Effects from the Prime Time Access Rule
By 1971, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) introduced the Prime Time Access Rule, which freed local network affiliates in the top 50 markets (in practice, the entire network) to take a half-hour of prime time from the networks on Mondays through Saturdays and one full hour on Sundays. Because nearly all affiliates found production costs for the FCC's intended goal of increased public affairs programming very high and the ratings (and by association, advertising revenues) low, making it mostly unprofitable, the FCC created an exception for network-authored news and public affairs shows. After a six-month hiatus in late 1971, CBS found a prime place for 60 Minutes in a portion of that displaced time, 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Eastern (5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Central Time) on Sundays in January 1972.[9]
This proved somewhat less than satisfactory, however, because in order to accommodate CBS' telecasts of late afternoon National Football League (NFL) football games, 60 Minutes went on hiatus during the fall from 1972 to 1975 (and the summer of 1972). This took place because football telecasts were protected contractually from interruptions in the wake of the infamous "Heidi Bowl" incident on NBC in November 1968. Despite the irregular scheduling, the program's hard-hitting reports attracted a steadily growing audience, particularly during the waning days of the Vietnam War and the gripping events of the Watergate scandal; at that time, few if any other major network news shows did in-depth investigative reporting to the degree carried out by 60 Minutes. Eventually, during the summers of 1973 through 1975, CBS did allow the program back onto the prime time schedule proper, on Fridays in 1973 and Sundays the two years thereafter, as a replacement for programs aired during the regular television season.
It was only when the FCC returned an hour to the networks on Sundays (for news or family programming), which had been taken away from them four years earlier, in a 1975 amendment to the Access Rule, that CBS finally found a viable permanent timeslot for 60 Minutes. When a family-oriented drama, Three for the Road, ended after a 12-week run in the fall, the newsmagazine took its place at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time (6:00 p.m. Central) on December 7, 1975. It has aired at that time since for 42 years as of 2017, making 60 Minutes not only the longest-running prime time program currently in production, but also the television program (excluding daily programs such as evening newscasts or morning news-talk shows) broadcasting for the longest length of time at a single time period each week in U.S. television history.[citation needed]
This move, and the addition of then-White House correspondent Dan Rather to the reporting team, made the program into a strong ratings hit and, eventually, a general cultural phenomenon. This was no less than a stunning reversal of the historically poor ratings performances of documentary programs on network television. By 1976, 60 Minutes became the top-rated program on Sunday nights in the U.S. By 1979, it had achieved the #1 spot among all television programs in the Nielsen ratings, unheard of before for a news broadcast in prime time. This success translated into great profits for CBS, advertising rates went from $17,000 per 30-second spot in 1975 to $175,000 in 1982.[10]
The program sometimes does not start until after 7:00 p.m. Eastern, due largely to CBS' live broadcast of NFL games. At the conclusion of an NFL game, 60 Minutes will air in its entirety. However, on the West Coast (and all of the Mountain Time Zone), because the actual end of the live games is much earlier in the afternoon in comparison to the Eastern and Central time zones, 60 Minutes is always able to start at its normal start time of 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time, leaving affiliates free to broadcast local news, the CBS Evening News, and other local or syndicated programming leading up to 60 Minutes. The program's success has also led CBS Sports to schedule events (such as the final round of the Masters Tournament and the second round and regional final games of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament) leading into 60 Minutes and the rest of the network's primetime lineup, thus (again, except on the West Coast) pre-empting the Sunday editions of the CBS Evening News and affiliates' local newscasts.
Starting in the 2012–2013 season, in order to accompany a new NFL rule that the second game of an NFL doubleheader start at 4:25 p.m., CBS officially changed the start time of 60 Minutes to 7:30 p.m. Eastern time on Sundays in Eastern and Central Time Zone markets when there is an NFL doubleheader scheduled to air (there are nine doubleheaders during the NFL season – eight during the first 16 weeks of the season, and the final week) to protect against overruns. The start time remains at 7:00 p.m. Eastern time in markets where only a single game is set to air (markets that have only a 1:00 p.m. Eastern time game on single game weeks, and in markets where a home team's NFL game is on Fox at 4:05 p.m., meaning CBS cannot air a doubleheader because of restrictions imposed by the NFL).[11]
Pre-emptions since 1978
The program has rarely been pre-empted since 1978. Two notable pre-emptions occurred in 1976 and 1977, to make room for the annual telecast of The Wizard of Oz, which had recently returned to CBS after having been shown on NBC for eight years. However, CBS would, in later years, schedule the film so that it would no longer pre-empt 60 Minutes. Another exception is on years when CBS airs the Super Bowl or since 2003, alternating, odd-numbered years where the AFC Championship Game has the 6:30 p.m. Eastern start time, which is played into prime-time and followed by a special lead-out program.[citation needed]
On September 22, 2013, CBS chose to pre-empt 60 Minutes as a result of carrying the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards after an NFL doubleheader.[12]
Radio broadcast and Internet distribution
60 Minutes is also simulcast on several former CBS Radio flagship stations now owned by Entercom (such as KYW in Philadelphia, WCBS in New York City, WBBM in Chicago, WWJ in Detroit and KCBS in San Francisco) when it airs locally on their sister CBS Television Network affiliate; even in the Central and Eastern time zones, the show is aired at the top of the hour at 7:00 p.m./6:00 p.m. Central (barring local sports play-by-play pre-emptions and breaking news coverage) no matter how long the show is delayed on CBS Television, resulting in radio listeners often hearing the show on those stations ahead of the television broadcast. An audio version of each broadcast without advertising began to be distributed via podcast and the iTunes Store, starting with the September 23, 2007 broadcast.[13] Video from 60 Minutes (including full episodes) is also made available for streaming several hours after the program's initial broadcast on CBSNews.com and CBS All Access.
Format
60 Minutes consists of three long-form news stories, without superimposed graphics. There is a commercial break between two stories. Each story is introduced from a set with a backdrop resembling pages from a magazine story on the same topic. The program undertakes its own investigations and follows up on investigations instigated by national newspapers and other sources. Unlike its most famous competitor 20/20 as well as traditional local and national news programs, the 60 Minutes journalists never share the screen with (or speak to) other 60 Minutes journalists on camera at any time. This creates a strong psychological sense of intimacy between the journalist and the television viewer.
Reporting tone
60 Minutes blends the probing journalism of the seminal 1950s CBS series See It Now with Edward R. Murrow (a show for which Hewitt served as the director for its first few years) and the personality profiles of another Murrow program, Person to Person. In Hewitt's own words, 60 Minutes blends "higher Murrow" and "lower Murrow".[14]
"Point/Counterpoint" segment
For most of the 1970s, the program included Point/Counterpoint, in which a liberal and a conservative commentator debated a particular issue. This segment originally featured James J. Kilpatrick representing the conservative side and Nicholas von Hoffman[15] for the liberal, with Shana Alexander[16] taking over for von Hoffman after he departed in 1974.[15] The segment was an innovation that caught the public imagination as a live version of competing editorials. In 1979, Alexander asked Hewitt to raise the pay of $350 a week, Hewitt declined, and the segment ended.[15]
Point/Counterpoint was also lampooned by the NBC comedy series Saturday Night Live, which featured Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd as debaters, with Aykroyd announcing the topic, Curtin making an opening statement, then Aykroyd typically retorting with, "Jane, you ignorant slut" and Curtin with "Dan, you pompous ass".[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] In the 1980 film Airplane!, in which the faux Kilpatrick argues in favor of the plane crashing stating "they bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into"; and in the earlier sketch comedy film, The Kentucky Fried Movie, where the segment was called "Count/Pointercount".
A similar concept was revived briefly in March 2003, this time featuring Bob Dole and Bill Clinton, former opponents in the 1996 presidential election. The pair agreed to do ten segments, called "Clinton/Dole" and "Dole/Clinton" in alternating weeks, but did not continue into the 2003–2004 fall television season. Reports indicated that the segments were considered too gentlemanly, in the style of the earlier "Point/Counterpoint", and lacked the feistiness of Crossfire.[25]
Andy Rooney segment
From 1978 to 2011, the program usually ended with a (usually light-hearted and humorous) commentary by Andy Rooney expounding on topics of wildly varying import, ranging from international politics, to economics, and to personal philosophy on everyday life. One recurring topic was measuring the amount of coffee in coffee cans.[26]
Rooney's pieces, particularly one in which he referred to actor Mel Gibson as a "wacko", on occasion led to complaints from viewers. In 1990, Rooney was suspended without pay for three months by then-CBS News President David Burke, because of the negative publicity around his saying that "too much alcohol, too much food, drugs, homosexual unions, cigarettes [are] all known to lead to premature death."[27] He wrote an explanatory letter to a gay organization after being ordered not to do so. After only four weeks without Rooney, 60 Minutes lost 20% of its audience. CBS management then decided that it was in the best interest of the network to have Rooney return immediately.[28]
Rooney published several books documenting his contributions to the program, including Years Of Minutes and A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney. Rooney retired from 60 Minutes, delivering his final commentary on October 2, 2011, it was his 1,097th commentary over his 34-year career on the program. He died one month later on November 4, 2011. The November 13, 2011 edition of 60 Minutes featured an hour-long tribute to Rooney and his career, and included a rebroadcast of his final commentary segment.
Opening sequence
The opening sequence features a 60 Minutes "magazine cover" with the show's trademark, an Aristo stopwatch, intercut with preview clips of the episode's stories. The sequence ends with each of the current correspondents and hosts introducing themselves. The last host who appears (currently Bill Whitaker) then says, "Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes". When Rooney was a prominent fixture, the final line was "Those stories and Andy Rooney, tonight on 60 Minutes". Before that, and whenever Rooney did not appear, the final line was "Those stories and more, tonight on 60 Minutes".
60 Minutes was the first, and remains the only, regularly scheduled program in the U.S. to never have used theme music.[citation needed] The only "theme" is the ticking of the stopwatch, which counts off each of the broadcast's titular 60 minutes, starting from zero at the beginning of each show. It is seen during the opening title sequence, before each commercial break, and at the tail-end of the closing credits, and each time it appears it displays (within reasonable accuracy) the elapsed time of the episode to that point.
On October 29, 2006, the opening sequence changed from a black background, which had been used for over a decade, to white. Also, the gray background for the Aristo stopwatch in the "cover" changed to red, the color for the title text changed to white, and the stopwatch itself changed from the diagonal position it had been oriented in for 31 years to an upright position.[citation needed]
Web content
Videos and transcripts of 60 Minutes editions, as well as clips that were not included in the broadcast are available on the program's website. In September 2010, the program launched a website called "60 Minutes Overtime", in which stories broadcast on-air are discussed in further detail.[29]
iPad content
CBS Interactive released a mobile app in 2013, "60 Minutes for iPad", which allows users to watch 60 Minutes on iPad devices and access some of the show's archival footage.
Correspondents and hosts
Current correspondents and commentators
Current hosts
Lesley Stahl (host, 1991–present, co-editor)
Scott Pelley (host, 2003–present)
Bill Whitaker (host, 2014–present)
John Dickerson (2019–present)
Current part-time correspondents
Anderson Cooper (2006–present) (also at CNN)
Norah O'Donnell (2015–present)
Sharyn Alfonsi (2015–present)
Jon Wertheim (2017–present)
Former correspondents and hosts
Former hosts
Harry Reasoner † (host, 1968–1970 and 1978–1991)
Mike Wallace † (host, 1968–2006; correspondent emeritus 2006–2008)
Morley Safer † (part-time correspondent, 1968–1970; host, 1970–2016)[30]
Dan Rather (part-time correspondent, 1968–1975; host, 1975–1981 and 2005–2006) (now at AXS TV)
Ed Bradley † (part-time correspondent, 1976–1981; host, 1981–2006)[31]
Diane Sawyer (part-time correspondent, 1981–1984; host, 1984–1989) (now at ABC News)
Meredith Vieira (part-time correspondent, 1982–1985 and 1991–1993; host, 1990–1991)
Bob Simon † (1996–2015)[32]
Christiane Amanpour (part-time correspondent, 1996–2000; host, 2000–2005)
Lara Logan (part-time correspondent, 2005–2012; host, 2012–2018)[33]
Steve Kroft (host, 1989–2019; co-editor, 2019)[34]
Former part-time correspondents
Walter Cronkite † (1968–1981)
Charles Kuralt † (1968–1979)
Roger Mudd (1968–1980) (retired)
Bill Plante (1968–1995) (retired)
Eric Sevareid † (1968–1969)
John Hart (1969–1975) (retired)
Bob Schieffer (1973–1996)
Morton Dean (1975–1979) (retired)
Marlene Sanders † (1978–1987)
Charles Osgood (1981–1994) (retired)
Forrest Sawyer (1985–1987)
Connie Chung (1990–1993) (retired)
Paula Zahn (1990–1999)
John Roberts (1992–2005) (now at Fox News Channel)
Russ Mitchell (1995–1998) (now at WKYC in Cleveland)
Carol Marin (1997–2002)[35]
Bryant Gumbel (1998–2002)
Katie Couric (2006–2011)
Charlie Rose (2008–2017)
Byron Pitts (2009–2013)[36] (now at ABC News)
Alison Stewart (2012)
Sanjay Gupta (2011–2014)
Oprah Winfrey (2017–2018)
Commentators
Commentators for 60 Minutes have included:
James J. Kilpatrick † (conservative debater, 1971–1979)
Nicholas von Hoffman † (liberal debater, 1971–1974)
Shana Alexander † (liberal debater, 1975–1979)
Andy Rooney † (commentator, 1978–2011)
Stanley Crouch (commentator, 1996)
Molly Ivins † (liberal commentator, 1996)
P. J. O'Rourke (conservative commentator, 1996)
Bill Clinton (liberal debater, 2003)
Bob Dole (conservative debater, 2003)
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