SIXTY MINUTES with Mike Wallace

60 Minutes
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For Sixty Minutes in Australia see 60 Minutes (Australia).
For the unit of time, see hour.
Sixty Minutes was also the replacement for the BBC current affairs programme Nationwide.

The ticking TAG Heuer stopwatch from 60 Minutes.
60 Minutes is an investigative television newsmagazine on United States television, which has run on CBS News since 1968. The program was created by long time producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation. It has been the top-rated program for much of its life, and has garnered numerous awards over the years. It is considered by many to be the pre-eminent investigative television program in the United States.
Contents[hide]
1 History
2 Format
3 Ratings history
4 Correspondents
4.1 Past Correspondents
4.2 Commentators
5 Recognition and controversies
5.1 Controversies
6 60 Minutes II
7 International versions
7.1 Australia
7.2 New Zealand
8 References in popular culture
9 See also
10 References
11 Book references
12 External links
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History
The initial run of 60 Minutes was as a bi-weekly show hosted by Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace which debuted on CBS on September 24, 1968. Don Hewitt, who had been a producer of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, sought out Wallace as a contrast to Harry Reasoner (Madsen, 14). 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 import but focused upon individuals in conflict with those issues, and to keep the reports to around thirteen minutes (Madsen 14). However, the initial season was troubled by lack of network confidence. In 1970, the FCC instituted a rule stipulating that local network affiliates produce their own content for half an hour on weeknights and one hour of prime time on Sunday. Because affiliates found the costs for these productions high and the advertising rates low, the FCC created an exception for network-authored news and public affairs, and this ensured a place for 60 Minutes on Sunday night, as well as a duration for it (Madsen 15).
Morley Safer replaced Harry Reasoner in 1969, and he took over the task of reporting less aggressive stories. However, when Richard Nixon began targeting press access and reporting, even Safer began to do "hard" investigative reports, and in 1970 alone 60 Minutes reported on cluster bombs, the South Vietnamese Army, Canada's amnesty for American draft dodgers, Nigeria, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland (Madsen 15). 1970 also saw the introduction of "Point/Counterpoint," with James J. Kilpatrick and, eventually, Shana Alexander, a three minute debate between spokespeople for the political right and left, respectively. This segment pioneered a format that would later be adapted by CNN for its Crossfire show.
By 1975, it was the top-rated show on Sunday nights in the United States. By 1982, it was one of the highest rated shows overall. Its advertising rates went from $17,000 per thirty seconds in 1975 to $175,000 in 1982 (Madsen 17). In 1981, Channel 9 in Australia licensed a spin-off of 60 Minutes, complete with ticking clock and format and, later, New Zealand followed suit with its own 60 Minutes.
At 87 years old, Mike Wallace is not only the oldest television personality today (tied with Helen Wagner), but one who has last the longest with one news show continuously, having been a part of 60 Minutes since its inception in 1968. On March 14, 2006, Wallace announced his retirement from 60 Minutes after 37 years with the program. He will continue working for CBS News as a "Correspondent Emeritus."
As of 2005, it is the only regularly scheduled television program without any type of theme music.
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Format
The format of 60 Minutes consists of three long-form news stories, without superimposed graphics. The stories are introduced from a set which has a backdrop resembling a magazine story on the same topic. The show undertakes its own investigations and follows up on investigations instigated by national newspapers and other sources.
Many topics center on allegations of wrongdoing and corruption on the part of corporations, politicians, and other public officials. Said figures are commonly either subjected to an interview, or evade contact with the 60 Minutes crew altogether, either by written notice or by simply fleeing from the approaching journalist and his camera crew. Instead of summarizing an interview or providing direct commentary on an issue, 60 Minutes prefers to air the interview itself. When the subject is hiding a secret, the viewers witness the evasion directly.
The show also features profiles. The profiles are occasionally of celebrities and offer up a biography of the figure, focusing upon the celebrity's early life story, obstacles, and choices, rather than offering a simple publicity platform. Non-celebrity profiles usually feature a person who has accomplished an heroic action or striven to improve the world.
In 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 was the director 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."
For most of the 1970s, the program included the Point/Counterpoint segment in which a liberal and a conservative commentator would debate a particular issue. This originally featured James J. Kilpatrick representing the conservative side and Nicholas von Hoffman for the liberals, with Shana Alexander taking over for von Hoffman after he departed in 1974. Although discontinued in 1979, when Andy Rooney, who had previously left the show with Harry Reasoner, returned to offer commentary, the segment was an innovation that caught the public imagination as a live version of competing editorials. Point/Counterpoint was also lampooned by the NBC comedy series Saturday Night Live, which featured Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd as debaters, with Aykroyd typically beginning his remarks with, "Jane, you ignorant slut".
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, which were called "Clinton/Dole" and "Dole/Clinton" in alternating weeks, but did not continue into the 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.[1]
Since 1979, the show has usually ended with a (usually light-hearted or humorous) commentary by Andy Rooney expounding on topics of wildly varying import, ranging from international politics, to economics, and to personal philosophy on every-day life. One recurring topic has been counting the amount of coffee in coffee-cans[2] . Rooney's pieces, particularly one in which he referred to actor Mel Gibson as a "wacko," have on occasion led to complaints from viewers.
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Ratings history
Based on ratings, 60 Minutes is the most successful broadcast in U.S. television history. For five of its seasons it has been that year's top program, a feat only matched by the sitcoms All in the Family and The Cosby Show. It was a top ten show for 23 seasons in a row (1977-2000), an unsurpassed record.
60 Minutes first broke into the Ratings Top 20 during the 1976-77 season. The following season it was the fourth-most-watched show, and by 1979-80, it was the number one show. During the 21st century it remains among the top 20 programs in the Nielsen Ratings, and the highest-rated news magazine.
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Correspondents
Mike Wallace is perhaps the iconic representation of the style of journalism for which the show is known and has been on the show since its inception in 1968.
The program's correspondents and commentators have included:
Ed Bradley (1981-present)
Steve Kroft (1989-present)
Lara Logan (2005-present)
Scott Pelley (2003-present)
Dan Rather (1975-1981, 2005-present)
Morley Safer (1970-present)
Bob Simon (1996-present)
Lesley Stahl (1991-present)
Katie Couric (Beginning September 2006)
Anderson Cooper (Beginning September 2006)
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Past Correspondents
Harry Reasoner (1968-1970, 1978-1991)
Diane Sawyer (1984-1989)
Meredith Vieira (1989-1991)
Mike Wallace (1968-2006)[3]-Correspondent Emeritus
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Commentators
Since 1978, Andy Rooney has contributed a humorous and sometimes cantankerous commentary at the end of each episode. Other commentators include:
Shana Alexander (Liberal debater, 1975-1979)
Bill Clinton (Liberal debater, 2003)
Stanley Crouch (Commentator, 1996)
Bob Dole (Conservative debater, 2003)
Molly Ivins (Liberal commentator, 1996)
James J. Kilpatrick (Conservative debater, 1971-1979)
P. J. O'Rourke (Conservative commentator, 1996)
Nicholas Von Hoffman (Liberal debater, 1971-1974)
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Recognition and controversies
CBS has been the recipient of numerous awards, including Peabody Awards for the segments "All in the Family", an investigation into abuses by government and military contractors; "The CIA's Cocaine", which uncovered CIA involvement in drug smuggling; and "Friendly Fire", a report on incidents of friendly fire in the Gulf War. They received an Investigative Reporter and Editor medal for their segment "The Osprey", documenting a Marine coverup of deadly flaws in the V-22 Osprey helicopter.
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Controversies
The show has been praised for landmark journalism and received many awards. However, it has also become embroiled in some controversy, including:
"Unintended acceleration"
In 1986, Don Hewitt greenlit a story concerning the Audi 5000 automobile, a popular German luxury car. The story concerned a number of incidents where the car purportedly accelerated without warning while parked, injuring or killing people. 60 Minutes was unable to duplicate this behavior, and so hired an outside consultant to modify the transmission to behave in this manner, and aired a story about it.
The incident devastated Audi sales in the United States, which did not reach the same level for another fifteen years. The initial incidents which prompted the report were found by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Transport Canada to have been attributable to operator error, where car owners had depressed the accelerator pedal instead of the brake pedal. CBS issued a partial retraction, without acknowledging the test results of involved government agencies[4].
A rival to 60 Minutes, Dateline NBC, would be found guilty of similar tactics years later regarding fuel tank integrity on General Motors pickup trucks.
Brown and Williamson
In 1995, former Brown and Williamson (B&W) Vice President for Research and Development Jeffrey Wigand provided information to 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman that B&W had systematically hidden the health risks of their cigarettes. Furthermore, it was alleged that B&W had introduced foreign agents (fiberglass, ammonia, etc.) with the intent of enhancing the effect of nicotine. Bergman began to produce a piece based upon the information, but ran into opposition from Don Hewitt. Because of the hesitation from Hewitt, The Wall Street Journal instead broke Wigand's story. The 60 Minutes piece was eventually aired with substantially altered content, and was missing some of the most damning evidence against B&W. The exposé of the incident was published in an article in Vanity Fair by Marie Brenner, entitled The Man Who Knew Too Much[5]. The New York Times wrote that 60 Minutes and CBS had "betrayed the legacy of Edward R. Murrow." The incident was turned into a seven-times Oscar-nominated feature film entitled The Insider, directed by Michael Mann and starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino.
U.S. Customs Service
60 Minutes alleged in 1997 that agents of the U.S. Customs Service ignored drug trafficking across the U.S.-Mexico border at San Diego[6]. The only evidence was a memorandum apparently written by Rudy Camacho, who was the head of the San Diego branch office. Based on this memo, CBS alleged that Camacho had allowed trucks belonging to a particular firm to cross the border unimpeded. Mike Horner, a former Customs Service employee, had passed the memos on to 60 Minutes, and even provided a copy with an official stamp. Camacho was not consulted about the article, and his career was devastated in the immediate term as his own department placed suspicion on him. In the end, it turned out that Horner had forged the documents as an act of revenge for his treatment within the Customs Service. Camacho successfully sued CBS for an unknown settlement, and Don Hewitt was forced to issue an on-air retraction[7].
Memogate / Rathergate
Officially known as the Killian documents, Memogate involved 4 historical memos used in a 60 Minutes Wednesday broadcast aired on September 8, 2004, during the 2004 US presidential campaign. The memos indicated that President George W. Bush was given preferential treatment and later was excused improperly from completing his tour with the United States National Guard. Conservative American bloggers later asserted that these documents had not been verified properly by CBS and claimed they were forgeries. The authenticity of the documents has neither been proven nor disproven. Dan Rather, who narrated the segment, publicly vouched for the documents for twelve days before he reversed himself on September 20, 2004 and stated that he could no longer support their authenticity and that "We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry".
Viacom cross-promotion
In recent years the show has been accused of promoting books, films, and interviews with celebrities who are published or promoted by sister businesses in the Viacom empire, without disclosing the journalistic conflict-of-interest to viewers[8]. However, due to media consolidation, this has become standard practice on many television news broadcasts.
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60 Minutes II
Main article: 60 Minutes II
In 1999, a second edition of 60 Minutes was started in the U.S., called 60 Minutes II. This edition was later renamed 60 Minutes by CBS for the fall of 2004 in order to signify its quality. CBS News president Andrew Heyward said, "The Roman numeral II created some confusion on the part of the viewers and suggested a watered-down version" [1]. However, a widely-known controversy which came to be known as Rathergate regarding a report that aired September 8, 2004 caused another name change. The show was renamed 60 Minutes Wednesday both to differentiate itself and to avoid tarnishing the Sunday edition, as the editions were editorially independent from one another. The show reverted back to its original title with Roman numerals on July 8, 2005, when the show moved to a Friday night 8pm ET timeslot to finish its run. Its last broadcast was on September 2, 2005.
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International versions
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Australia
Main article: 60 Minutes (Australia)
The Australian 60 Minutes premiered on February 11, 1979. It airs on Sunday nights on the Nine Network.
Reporter Richard Carleton suffered a heart attack on 7 May 2006, while reporting at a mine. It was reported that he asked a question at a news conference, walked out and suffered a heart attack. Paramedics tried to revive him for 20 minutes until an ambulance arrived, but was pronounced dead on arrival.
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New Zealand
Main article: 60 Minutes (New Zealand television series)
The New Zealand version of 60 Minutes has aired on national television since 1989, when it was shown on TV3. In 1992 the rights were acquired by TVNZ, who began broadcasting it in 1993. The network aired the program for nine years before dropping it in 2002 for its own program, entitled Sunday. Sunday is currently the highest rating current affairs show broadcast on New Zealand television, followed by 20/20. 60 Minutes is now broadcast by rival network TV3.
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References in popular culture
60 Minutes has become an iconic newsmagazine show, in part due to its long run, the stopwatch, and the "Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" segments. As a result, references to the program have frequently appeared in movies and other television shows.
The 1980 film Airplane parodied Kilpatrick of Point/Counterpoint commenting about the passengers of an apparently doomed aircraft.
In The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror V" episode, one short story references 60 Minutes. In a parody of The Shining, Homer breaks through a door with an axe shouting "Here's Johnny!" but finds nobody. He breaks thorugh a second door, shouting "David Letterman!", finding Grandpa Simpson, who responds "Hi David, I'm Grandpa!" On the third door, he breaks through, he holds up a stopwatch and yells, "I'm Mike Wallace, I'm Morley Safer, and I'm Ed Bradley. All this and Andy Rooney tonight on 60 Minutes!", scaring Marge, Bart, Lisa.
In the Family Guy "Death Is a Bitch" eipsode, the beginning spoofs the 60 Minutes introduction. The show seen is titled 60 Minutes: After Dark and features four newscasters from 60 Minutes saying their names while in bed. Lesley Stahl, the last person to speak, says, "And one of you smells." (On Region 2 DVD edits and Adult Swim airings, this is "And one of you is hung like an elf"). This is a possible poke at the long tenures of the correspondents; most of the current ones have worked together for at least a decade, some for two decades.
In the penultimate episode of Seinfeld titled "The Puerto Rico Day Parade", it is discovered that Elaine uses 60 Minutes as a way to 'wind down' from the weekend every Sunday.
In Ed, Edd n Eddy the jock character Kevin was revealed to regularly watch 60 Minutes.
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See also
This Hour Has Seven Days, which pre-dates 60 Minutes by a couple of years, was similar in journalistic style and format
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References
^ '60 Minutes' may veto Clinton-Dole face-offs, Peter Johnson, USA Today, 6 May 2003.
^ "A Pound of Coffee?", Andy Rooney, CBS News, July 6, 2003.
^ Mike Wallace Retires From '60 Minutes,' CBS News, 14 March 2006.
^ "A Car Possessed by Demons," Ukrainian Archive, April 24, 2002.
^ "The Man Who Knew Too Much," Marie Brenner, Vanity Fair, May, 1996.
^ "I'd Rather Be Blogging: CBS stonewalls as 'guys in pajamas' uncover a fraud.", John Fund, The Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2004.
^ "Another `60 Minutes' Apology on a Drug Smuggling Story", The Washington Post, April 13, 1999 (abstract).
^ "All in the Family: Who says 60 Minutes doesn't pay for interviews?", Bryan Preston and Chris Regan, The National Review, April 2, 2004.
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Book references
Who's Who in America 1998, "Hewitt, Don S." Marquis Who's Who: New Providence, NJ, 1998. p. 1925.
Who's Who in America 1998, "Wallace, Mike." Marquis Who's Who: New Providence, NJ, 1998. p. 4493.
Madsen, Axel. 60 Minutes: The Power and the Politics of America's Most Popular TV News Show. Dodd, Mead and Company: New York City, 1984.
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External links
U.S. version
Official website from the CBS website
History and summary from the Museum of Broadcast Communications website
60 Minutes at The Internet Movie Database
60 Minutes II at The Internet Movie Database
The End Of the Golden Age?, a March 1999 article from American Journalism Review
Tick, tick, tick, a November/December 2001 article from Columbia Journalism Review, also available here
Australian version
Australia's 60 Minutes official website from Nine Network
60 Minutes (Australia) at The Internet Movie Database
New Zealand version
New Zealand's 60 Minutes official website from the TV3 website
60 Minutes (New Zealand) at The Internet Movie Database
Little Green Footballs - Identical recreation of a Killian document with a modern word processor
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes"
Categories: 1960s TV shows in the United States 1970s TV shows in the United States 1980s TV shows in the United States 1990s TV shows in the United States 2000s TV shows in the United States Australian television series CBS network shows CH network shows News television series Nielsen Ratings winners US primetime network series that ran over ten years