The legacy of 60 Minutes

How popular is 60 Minutes?

It’s a broadcasting institution. 60 Minutes is the longest continuously running prime time TV program ever, watched by 16 million viewers every week. Not only has it been in the Nielsen top 10 for the last 23 seasons, it’s the only show ever to have the highest ratings in three different decades. 60 Minutes is the most honored TV series of all time, with 75 Emmy Awards. It’s also the most profitable, having earned CBS an estimated $2 billion.

What’s the secret?

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Before 60 Minutes debuted, in 1968, television news was terribly earnest—and terribly dull. It was also terribly unprofitable and was usually subsidized by a network’s hit comedies and dramas. Into this void stepped creator and executive producer Don Hewitt, a protegé of CBS legends Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. Hewitt, whose notions of journalism had been shaped by the classic newspaper comedy The Front Page, saw no reason why televised journalism couldn’t be entertaining. He conceived of 60 Minutes as a broadcast version of Life magazine or the Saturday Evening Post. “Instead of dealing with issues,” says Hewitt, “we tell stories.”

What kind of stories?

The show has produced some of television’s most powerful investigative pieces. In 1976, the show opened a bogus medical clinic, installed a hidden camera, and exposed a Medicaid kickback scheme. Three years before Three Mile Island, the show ran a groundbreaking scoop about lax safety at New York’s Indian Point nuclear power plant. In 1983, 60 Minutes sprang Lenell Geter, a young black man, from prison after proving he was innocent. The show has also excelled at dramatic interviews, such as Mike Wallace’s wrenching 1975 face to face with Clint Hill, the guilt-ridden Secret Service agent who was guarding President Kennedy when he was assassinated. Bill Clinton’s 1992 60 Minutes appearance, wherein he effectively admitted to adultery, helped salvage his presidential campaign. (Six years later, Kathleen Willey’s accusations of sexual harassment on 60 Minutes helped seal Clinton’s reputation as a serial philanderer.) Many lighter segments have been equally effective: Morley Safer’s ride aboard the Orient Express in 1977, Harry Reasoner’s wistful homage to Casablanca in 1981, and memorable profiles of entertainers like Katharine Hepburn, Lena Horne, and Jackie Gleason.

Does everyone like the show?

Many journalists and critics don’t. Their chief complaint is that 60 Minutes reduces complex issues to mini morality plays, with clearly defined heroes and villains. Often this involves the use of “gotcha” tactics to heighten a story’s shock value. 60 Minutes pioneered such techniques as setting up sting operations and the “ambush interview,” with Wallace or other reporters barging into some miscreant’s office with a TV camera rolling. Frequently, the show will underscore its point by showing the “villain” ducking the correspondent’s persistent questions, or by cutting to an extreme close-up, the better to see the malefactor sweat. Hewitt makes no apologies for such showbiz touches. “We try to present and package reality as attractively as Hollywood packages fiction,” he says.

Are there other complaints?

On 60 Minutes, the correspondents aren’t neutral observers. Rather, they’re central players in the drama. The approach probably reached its nadir in a 1980 segment about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which was dominated by footage of Dan Rather dressed absurdly in native garb. (The episode gave rise to the infamous moniker “Gunga Dan.”) This kind of storytelling, wrote Tad Friend in The New Yorker, ultimately showcases the reporter: “The ‘story’ is not advanced, but our bond with the star is. And that bond, in fact, is the story.” Ironically, the correspondents rarely do the heavy work of research, reporting, and editing. That falls to the staff of more than 40 producers. “The show,” producer Barry Lando once griped, “is a soap opera about people pretending to be reporters.”

Has 60 Minutes ever slipped up?

More than once. The most recent, of course, was Dan Rather’s piece on Bush’s National Guard service, which relied on highly suspect memos from a highly suspect source. Rather’s gaffe occurred on 60 Minutes’ Wednesday night spinoff, and the stars of the Sunday night show said they’d never fall for such obvious claptrap. But in 1986, 60 Minutes broadcast an eye-opening segment on the German automaker Audi, strongly suggesting that its 5000S luxury sedan had a deadly tendency to suddenly accelerate. Years later, the federal government concluded that Audis had no mechnical problem; drivers in several accidents had stepped on the gas instead of the brake. By then, Audi’s annual U.S. sales had plummeted from 73,000 cars to 23,000. The show’s most controversial episode, though, was its abortive exposé of the tobacco industry.

What is 60 Minutes’ legacy?

The show has produced a lot of worthy television, but its success has backfired. 60 Minutes blurred the line between news and entertainment, and showed corporate owners that news shows could be hugely profitable. Imitators such as ABC’s 20/20 and Dateline NBC have seized on the 60 Minutes formula, but these shows rely heavily on quickly produced segments on crimes, personal sob stories, and other news lite. The object is to fill airtime cheaply and generate big ratings. “60 Minutes has single-handedly ruined television,” says Hewitt, who retired as executive producer this year. “No one can report news today without making money.”

The scoop that was suppressed

60 Minutes

60 Minutes’

60 Minutes and the News: A Mythology for Middle America,