In “Mike Wallace is Here,” a worthwhile documentary currently playing on Netflix, Wallace’s biggest claim to fame “60 Minutes” is said to owe its success and staying power to its “hero journalists and sweating villains.”
Illustrating the point, the documentary includes a sequence in which Wallace confronts a nefarious-looking character in his office in the show’s trademark style, only to have the man initially seem delighted to meet the correspondent, recognizing him from TV, and somehow momentarily ignoring the implications of having Wallace and a camera crew on the other side of his desk.
Network television hasn’t been that big in a long time, and it probably never will be again.
Network television hasn’t been that big in a long time, and it probably never will be again. But as one of the few things that has continued to work and reliably draw a large audience, “60 Minutes” remained a true institution, making CBS News’ decision to mess with its formula puzzling, aggravating and thanks to its corporate management team, politically suspect.
That’s the awkward background as the curtain rises on the television newsmagazine’s 59th season on Sept. 13 after months of principled departures, firings and enough public drama to turn the media newsletter industry into an ongoing soap opera. It’s just that the “sweating villains” in this scenario are Paramount CEO David Ellison and his hand-picked CBS News chief, Bari Weiss, fueling suspicions that they have tarnished the division’s “crown jewel” to mollify President Donald Trump and serve an agenda based on corporate priorities and ideology, not the high-minded journalism for which the program is known.
The premiere episode thus finds itself under a microscope, although frankly, first likely impressions won’t say much about the bigger picture. With the departure of correspondents Scott Pelley — who was fired after criticizing his bosses in June — Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, one key question will be how the program fills its story pipeline in the coming weeks, given the time and industry historically involved in reporting and producing them.
For now, “60 Minutes” returns staffed with new faces and under the stewardship of two television novices: Weiss, whom Ellison installed after buying her right-leaning website, The Free Press; and her appointed executive producer, Nick Bilton. And if they have cobbled together a credible lineup — kicking off with, among other things, a profile of the Los Angeles Rams to capitalize on the NFL’s might as a lead-in — the fact that the Super Bowl favorite just lost its opening game in Australia underscores that in television, even what looks like a no-brainer isn’t necessarily a sure thing.
The larger issue is whether “60 Minutes” will sustain the qualities that defined it amid allegations of Weiss’ meddling and editorial interference — including charges of inserting White House “talking points” into stories — breaking from the independence the show’s success commanded. Plus, there’s the shadow of Paramount as it seeks to preserve its planned $110-billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery after the studio settled a frivolous lawsuit last year brought by Trump over a Kamala Harris profile during the 2024 presidential campaign.
Granted, “60 Minutes” has survived setbacks and scandals before. Speed bumps on its long journey have included caving to fears of the tobacco industry in 1995 to avoid a lawsuit as its corporate parent planned to merge with Westinghouse (a tale documented in the movie “The Insider”); and Dan Rather’s 2004 “60 Minutes II” report about then-President George W. Bush’s National Guard service — one of the stains conservatives regularly cite when accusing the program (and indeed, mainstream media in general) of the liberal bias they see under every nook and cranny.
Nevertheless, the newsmagazine has endured, marked by enviable stability preserving its ethos while passing the baton to new producers and talent. That includes veteran correspondents Lesley Stahl, 84, and Bill Whitaker, 75, who chose to stay despite public soul-searching following Pelley’s acrimonious exit, maintaining a link, however tenuous, to its storied past.
In “Mike Wallace is Here,” “60 Minutes” creator Don Hewitt admits to some bewilderment over why the show’s magazine format worked so well on television.
“This thing took off for reasons I still do not understand,” Hewitt said.
Part of the answer, of course, is that the show wasn’t just news, but great television, generating drama in a way that brought the medium to life — and, thanks to its commercial power, launched a thousand imitators, for better and often worse.
Yet while Hewitt, Wallace and their brethren didn’t immediately grasp what made “60 Minutes” tick, if a series that seemed like it would always be there begins slumping toward oblivion, no one will need to launch a major investigation this time to identify the culprits.
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