Correspondents at “60 Minutes” in past years have tried to win an interesting challenge: Could they leave the show for a summer vacation with one story already in the can?
Doing so now is no longer a game.
In the wake of a massive ouster of the top staff of the venerable newsmagazine, serious questions have been raised about whether CBS News will be able to launch the 59th season of “60 Minutes” on time in the fall. Getting the show off to a good start in mid-to-late September is crucial because the program uses the network’s Sunday-afternoon football games as massive generator of audience. “60 Minutes” has for years been the nation’s most-watched news program.
Now the question is whether the show will have enough on-air correspondents and production staff willing to assign, report, write, fact-check and edit three in-depth documentary-style vignettes of 12 minutes to 13 minutes length to show to football fans and news aficionados. Staffers are demoralized by the recent moves and questioning the motives of CBS parent Paramount Skydance, which has been eager to curry favor with the Trump administration as executives work to consummate a deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
“There’s not enough people,” says one person with knowledge of the inner workings of “60 Minutes.” This person says new episodes will provide tangible on-screen evidence of whether CBS News management was able to get production in gear. If “60 Minutes” offers an unusual number of “two parters,” or stories that take up two segments during the show, this person says, it’s a tell-tale sign there’s not enough content in the pipeline.
“I feel badly for the people there,” this person says. “They really don’t have anyplace else to go that’s at the same level, and they have to hang on” in an era of extreme tumult.
The ranks of “60 Minutes” senior leadership have been gutted. Over the past week, CBS News fired correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega; executive producer Tanya Simon; executive editor Dragaan Mihailovich; and two senior producers, Guy Campanile and Matthew Polevoy. A third correspondent, Anderson Cooper, announced his departure in February. The show has been rocked anew by the ouster of correspondent Scott Pelley, who was fired Tuesday night after challenging Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News, and Nick Bilton, a former technology reporter and documentary maker who has been installed as the new top producer at the newsmagazine.
The staff “is just unmoored,” says another person familiar with CBS News. “They want to know what’s going on” and how the show will have to change to accommodate Weiss’ vision.
CBS News declined to make executives available for comment. There is a sense that others will pick up some story duties, says one person familiar with the situation. Norah O’Donnell, the former “CBS Evening News” anchor, is expected to contribute stories, and CBS News personnel like Major Garrett have done segments for the program in recent weeks. Such an arrangement would likely help CBS News cut some of the costs of the newsmagazine, which are substantial.
Since Weiss’ arrival last year, information of that sort has been harder to get, according to three people with knowledge of the Paramount Skydance news operation. Weiss, a former opinion writer who left The New York Times to launch The Free Press, a digital site that often pokes at “woke” attitudes. Paramount paid a reported $150 million to acquire the site and has melded it with some CBS News operations, while Weiss holds sway over editorial and newsgathering personnel.
At a town hall meeting held in January, Weiss told CBS News personnel reporting the news that they should stop thinking “about which show will pick it up” or “what hour it will air on linear television,” said Weiss, but rather about: “how can we produce the most revelatory stories for an audience that expects the news immediately and on demand. And for younger generations for whom ‘streaming’ and ‘social” are simply: TV and the news.”
And yet, the TV shows continue to air.
Weiss’ interactions with many producers and reporters since that time have not been frequent, these people say. There appears to be a lot of enmity between the people Weiss has hired to form a CBS News “masthead” and the people tasked with making sure programs like “CBS Evening News” and “48 Hours” run as they should – and generate profits, to boot.
Pelley’s dramatic exit this week will no doubt create a new sense of camaraderie at “60 Minutes,” says one of the people familiar with CBS News. If Weiss and her team could make new outreach to the group and help them understand her vision for the task at hand, and what Bilton would like to do, this person says, the two sides may find common ground in getting the show ready for the fall.
But many are skeptical Weiss can foment a spirit of cooperation after such a wholescale ejection of top personnel at the newsmagazine, which, despite assertions to the contrary, continues to win massive crowds – even without football – and has a healthy digital presence.
In the fall, says one of the people familiar with CBS News, “we will see pretty quickly how all of this actually affected ’60 Minutes’.”
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