Profile
Photos
Comments
An Appraisal
The Man Who Kept ‘60 Minutes’ Ticking
To appreciate fully what Don Hewitt wrought, consider this: During the Woodstock and Moon landing summer of
1969, which we’ve all been treating as a distant moment in time, “60
Minutes” had been on the air for nearly a year. Will “American Idol” be around in 2043? Will it still be a Top 20 show? Don’t bet on it.
In
the wake of Mr. Hewitt’s death on Wednesday, much will be written about
how the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” his signal creation, paved the
way for a good share of what we see on television today. He is already
being credited or blamed — mostly blamed — for bringing entertainment
values to the presentation of news, and for the proliferation of
everything from competing magazine shows to tabloid-style celebrity
gossip to reality programming in general. But a moment should be taken
simply to honor the success: no show in the history of television has
been as widely popular for as long as “60 Minutes.” In business terms
Mr. Hewitt is indisputably a legend.
His cultural legacy may be
more mixed, but it’s easy to oversimplify when looking across 40 or
more years. Chains of influence aren’t direct: “60 Minutes” had been on
for 10 years before “20/20” was born, 13 years before “Entertainment
Tonight” came along and 30 years before what we now think of as reality
television took off. Mr. Hewitt may have given himself credit in a 2003
interview for ruining television, but he couldn’t do it by himself. (He
needed someone to invent the Internet, for one thing.)
“60
Minutes” was born at a time of uncertainty for both the nation and the
broadcasting industry, which was eager to attract the attention of an
increasingly radicalized young audience without unduly upsetting
advertisers. Its first season coincided with the debacle of CBS’s
censorship and cancellation of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” The
Tiffany network didn’t need any other problems.
Mr. Hewitt, who
had already been in television news at CBS for 20 years, drew on his
experience with evening news broadcasts and with interview programs
hosted by Edward R. Murrow. But the distinctive “60 Minutes” format was
more closely influenced by two foreign shows, the British “That Was the
Week That Was” and the Canadian “This Hour Has Seven Days,” that used
satire and song along with reporting to respond to the shattering
events of the time. The Canadian program produced controversial
segments on the Vietnam War and the Republican Party and pioneered the ambush interview.
The
American version that Mr. Hewitt created was a kinder, gentler, more
conservative take on those models — he covered the difficult topics,
but what he brought to the table were his cautious CBS News values, the
kind exemplified by that other recently deceased titan, Walter Cronkite. While the Smothers Brothers — the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of their day — opened the 1968 season with Harry Belafonte singing“Don’t Stop the Carnival” in front of images of the violence at
the Democratic convention that year in Chicago, “60 Minutes” began with
an interview with Ramsey Clark, then the attorney general, about police
brutality and reports from the convention headquarters of the two
candidates.
“60 Minutes” generated mediocre ratings in its early
seasons. It finally took off in the mid-1970s, becoming the No. 1 show
by the end of the decade. That can be attributed to several changes
regarding the show, including the addition of Dan Rather as a correspondent and the establishment of the 7 p.m. Sunday time
slot. But the most important factor was arguably external: Watergate
and the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.
The
show wasn’t high on the radar while the national mood alternated
between ecstasy and anger, but it found its audience when alienation
and distrust set in. “60 Minutes” arrived at No. 1 in the 1979-80
season, ending the two-year run of “Laverne & Shirley.” Its
ascension coincided neatly with the Iranian hostage crisis (which also
spawned “Nightline” on ABC).
The audience it found, then and now,
was significantly older than the television average, even for CBS.
(This past Sunday “60 Minutes” was the highest-rated show of the night,
with a healthy 12.4 million viewers, but its share of the valuable
18-to-49-year-old group was matched by “Big Brother,” which had four
million fewer total viewers, and nearly matched by “Family Guy,” which
trailed by seven million.) It’s another sign that what draws people to
the show isn’t the sensationalism to which it has occasionally fallen
victim but its stability — that it’s a predictable, if very well made,
package.
Mr. Hewitt’s greatest impact, I suspect, lies less in
the creation of the package — the elements of which already existed —
than in his brilliant, relentless promotion and protection of it. Long
after the show’s reports on William Westmoreland and Brown &
Williamson are forgotten, we’ll still be hearing in our heads the
ominous previews — taking up valuable commercial space during the
fourth quarters of football games — and the ticking of the stopwatch,
simultaneously the most annoying and most effective branding device in
television.
The idea of the watch came from the show’s original
director, Arthur Bloom, but it wouldn’t have been there if Mr. Hewitt
hadn’t approved. The great fortune of “60 Minutes,” and of all the
stars it has created, was to have Don Hewitt presenting it to the world.