Fair warning: In the next few weeks you may sense tremors rippling from Manhattan’s West 57th Street. A seismic shift is due soon at “60 Minutes” headquarters as Don Hewitt, who created that pioneering newsmagazine 36 years ago and has run it ever since, steps aside.
“I thought he’d NEVER leave,” jokes Mike Wallace, a “60 Minutes” correspondent since they brought it to the air Sept. 24, 1968.
Hewitt isn’t exiting the premises. But at 81 he has consented, however reluctantly, to hang up the job he tailored for himself and has worn for decades like a second skin.
After passing the baton to current “60 Minutes II” executive producer Jeff Fager, Hewitt will assume a newly fashioned position whose duties, if any, are yet to be determined.
“I’m gonna be downstairs: executive producer of CBS News,” says Hewitt, holding forth in his ninth-floor corner office — a gallery of awards, curios and photos of him with a half-century of giants.
Just what does “executive producer of CBS News” mean? Maybe whatever Hewitt makes of it: Nothing says he won’t get another brainstorm and run with it for the next 36 years.
In the meantime, he says, the CBS bosses “are gonna give me a big party. They’re gonna do an hour broadcast on me (airing Tuesday at 9 p.m.). All of which I would’ve traded to just stay here. They’re making a change in a broadcast that doesn’t need any change.
“But I’m not gonna argue with ’em,” he says, his grin radiating scrappiness, charm and simple wonderment at being such a lucky guy.
“I’m gonna take all this down there,” he says and gestures toward the eighth floor, “and sit with my souvenirs and contemplate maybe the best life that any guy who ever chose journalism as a profession ever led.”
Cue-card pioneerSome life! A kid from New Rochelle, N.Y., Hewitt busted into CBS News in 1948 — when radio still reigned and scoffed at television — and he jumped right into inventing TV journalism. Even some of its nuts-and-bolts: He is credited with using TV’s first cue cards and with superimposing titles over TV images (he used a menu board with rearrangable letters he got from a nearby diner).
What he didn’t invent, he was there for.
Along with reminiscences by his “60 Minutes” correspondents (Wallace as well as Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft and Lesley Stahl) and a tribute by Andy Rooney, the special, “Tell Me a Story: The Man Who Made ‘60 Minutes,”’ includes archival glimpses of Hewitt through the ages.
There he is in 1951 at a console beside CBS News’ august Edward R. Murrow showcasing TV’s marvels: “Don, will you push a button and bring in the Atlantic coast.”
He is also seen prepping a landmark event not just in TV’s history, but the nation’s. In September 1960, he produced the presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, for which both men turned down his offer of TV makeup, to the lasting regret of the ashen, sweating Nixon.
That broadcast had an impact far beyond helping Kennedy to victory: It proved the power of television over the electoral process.
“From that day on,” says Hewitt, “you can’t even think of running for office in the greatest democracy on Earth unless you’ve got the money to buy television time.”
Still, this was but a prelude to “60 Minutes,” which Hewitt (at 45, a bored CBS News documentary producer) saw as a TV version of Life magazine’s weekly words-and-photos recipe.
“He called me one Sunday,” remembers Wallace, “and said ‘Can I come over?’ And he began to talk about this vision he had. I said, ‘Sure, Don. Sure, Don.”’
At the time, Wallace was angling to be CBS’ White House correspondent. “But I figured, what the dickens, Hewitt would be fascinating to work with. And anyway, it’s gonna be 13 weeks and out.”
Quite the contrary. Hewitt fused crackerjack storytelling with journalistic rigor to create a lasting (eventually overcrowded) genre, the TV newsmagazine.
And when “60 Minutes” caught fire in the ratings, he realized he had done something else: Without meaning to, he had transformed TV news from a loss leader into a cash cow. Once it settled into its Sunday-at-7 slot in 1975, “60 Minutes” became a Top 20 prime-time series, then, a year later, cracked the Top 10 and stayed there for the next 13 seasons. Five times it ended up No. 1. (Though slipping in recent years, it currently ranks a still-robust 17th place.)
Bottom line: Broadcast news would never again be immune to ratings pressure.
Of course, that’s not such a bad thing if you get high ratings for doing it your way. Then, the bosses “leave you alone,” crows Hewitt, whose “60 Minutes” has been mostly left alone as it took the high road.
Legion of Super-Journalists
But in the mid-1990s the program hit a pothole. A “60 Minutes” expose charged the tobacco industry with ignoring, and lying about, evidence of its products’ harmfulness. Big Tobacco threatened lawsuits and CBS executives caved. Uncharacteristically deferential, Hewitt did their bidding, postponing the story and almost spiking it.
To make matters worse, the incident inspired a feature film, 1999’s “The Insider,” which portrayed much of CBS News as a refuge for cowards.
“I could have gone out and hired a bunch of gorillas and taken over the transmitter, and put the story on” as originally planned, Hewitt huffs. “There was no other way.”
For a while, “60 Minutes” saw its proud sheen a bit tarnished.
But that was a rare display of weakness by its Legion of Super-Journalists in their spirited crusade exposing evil liars with the truth.
“‘60 Minutes’ has been the happiest shop imaginable,” says Wallace, 86, who only recently reduced his workload, “because everybody was caught up in something they believed in. And it was Hewitt, with his enthusiasm and hard work and knowledge of how to put a piece together, who made it work.”
“There’s a little bit of him in each one of us,” agrees Fager, who once was a “60 Minutes” producer under Hewitt.
Fager predicts his old mentor “will remain a force for the show. He’s going to be in the office right below, probably poking the ceiling with a broomstick just to shake things up a little bit.”
And Hewitt, who knows where the elevator is, is likely to be paying them a call.
“If they want any advice, I’m there,” he says. “But am I gonna push my way in, and tell ’em what I think they’re doing wrong? Am I gonna sit in judgment of what goes on the air each Sunday? No.”
Then he grins, a little wistfully.
“I’m gonna try not to. I’m not sure I’ll succeed.”