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| Andy Rooney 60 Minutes |
In 2002, 60 Minutes was ranked #6 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.
Broadcast history
Early years
Since 1978, the opening features the Aristo stopwatch. Since October 29, 2006, the background changed to red, the title text color changed to white and the clock is now in the upright position. This version was used from 1982 to 2006.
The inspiration for the show came from the controversial Canadian news program This Hour Has Seven Days, which ran from 1964 to 1966, and in turn, was inspired by the British satire series That Was The Week That Was. The show pioneered many of the most important investigative journalism techniques, including re-editing interviews, hidden cameras, and "gotcha" visits to the home or office of an investigative subject. Imitators sprang up in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom during the 1970s, as well as on local television news.
Initially, 60 Minutes aired as a bi-weekly show hosted by Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace, debuting on September 24, 1968 and alternating weeks with other CBS News productions on Tuesday evenings at 10:00. The first edition, described by Reasoner in the opening as a "kind of a magazine for television," featured the following segments:
A look inside the headquarter suites of presidential candidates Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey during their respective parties' national conventions that summer;
Commentary by European writers Malcolm Muggeridge, Peter von Zahn, and Luigi Barzini, Jr. on the American electoral system;
A commentary by political columnist Art Buchwald;
An interview with then-Attorney General Ramsey Clark about police brutality;
An abbreviated version of an Academy Award-winning short film by Saul Bass, Why Man Creates; and
A meditation by Wallace and Reasoner on the relation between perception and reality. Wallace said that the show aimed to "reflect reality," while acknowledging the differing perceptions of it.
The first "magazine-cover" chroma key was a photo of two helmeted policemen (for the Clark interview segment). Wallace and Reasoner sat in chairs on opposite sides of the set, which had a cream-colored backdrop; the more famous black backdrop (which is still used as of 2011) did not appear until the following year. The logo was in Helvetica type with the word "Minutes" spelled in all lower-case letters; the logo most associated with the show did not appear until about 1974. Further, to extend the magazine motif, the producers added a "Vol. xx, No. xx" to the title display on the chroma key; that was seen until about 1971. The trademark stopwatch, however, did not appear on the inaugural broadcast; it would not debut until several episodes later. Alpo dog food was the sole sponsor of the first program.
Don Hewitt, who had been a producer of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, sought out Wallace as a stylistic contrast to Reasoner. 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 importance but focused upon individuals involved with, or in conflict with, those issues, and to limit the reports' airtime to around thirteen minutes. However, the initial season was troubled by lack of network confidence, as the show did not garner ratings much higher than that of other CBS News documentaries. As a rule, during that era, news programming during prime time lost money; networks mainly scheduled public affairs programs in prime time in order to bolster the prestige of their news departments, and thus boost ratings for the regular evening newscasts, which were seen by far more people than documentaries and the like. 60 Minutes struggled under that stigma during its first three years.
Changes to 60 Minutes came fairly early in the program's history. When Reasoner left CBS to co-anchor ABC's evening newscast (he would return to CBS and the show in 1978), Morley Safer joined the team in 1970, and he took over Reasoner's duties of reporting less aggressive stories. However, when Richard Nixon began targeting press access and reporting, even Safer, formerly the CBS News bureau head in Saigon and London, began to do "hard" investigative reports, and during the 1970–71 season alone 60 Minutes reported on cluster bombs, the South Vietnamese Army, draft dodgers, Nigeria, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland.
"Point/Counterpoint" segment
In 1971, the "Point/Counterpoint" segment was introduced, featuring James J. Kilpatrick and Nicholas von Hoffman (later 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. This ran until 1979, when Andy Rooney, whose commentaries were already alternating with the debate segment since the fall of 1978, replaced it. Rooney remained with the program as a regular until his last show on October 2, 2011.
Effects from the Prime Time Access Rule
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton A. Schwartz answers questions during an interview April 15, 2009 with Lara Logan from 60 Minutes.
By 1971, the FCC introduced the Prime Time Access Rule, which freed local network affiliates in the top 50 markets (in practice, the entire network) to take a half hour of prime time from the networks on Mondays through Saturdays and one full hour on Sundays. Because nearly all affiliates found production costs for the FCC's intended goal of increased public affairs programming very high and the ratings (thus advertising revenues) low, making it mostly unprofitable, the FCC created an exception for network-authored news and public affairs. After a six-month hiatus in late 1971, CBS thus found a prime place for 60 Minutes in a portion of that displaced time, 6–7 p.m. (Eastern time; 5–6 Central) on Sundays, in January 1972.
This proved somewhat less than satisfactory, however, because in order to accommodate CBS' telecasts of late afternoon National Football League games, 60 Minutes went on hiatus during the fall from 1972 to 1975 (and the summer of 1972). This took place because football telecasts were protected contractually from interruptions in the wake of the infamous "Heidi Game" incident on NBC in November 1968. Despite the irregular scheduling, the program's hard-hitting reports attracted a steadily growing audience, particularly during the waning days of the Vietnam War and the gripping events of the Watergate scandal; at that time, few if any other major-network news shows did in-depth investigative reporting to the degree carried out by 60 Minutes. Eventually, during the summers of 1973 through 1975, CBS did allow the show back onto the prime time schedule proper, on Fridays in 1973 and Sundays the two years thereafter, as a replacement for the regular season's program.
It was only when the FCC returned an hour to the networks on Sundays (for children's/family or news programming), taken away from them four years earlier, in a 1975 amendment to the Access Rule that CBS finally found a viable permanent timeslot for 60 Minutes. When a family-oriented drama, Three for the Road, ended after a 12-week run in the fall, the newsmagazine took its place at 7/6 p.m. on December 7. It has aired at that time since, for 35 years, making 60 Minutes not only the longest-running prime time program currently in production, but also the television program (excluding daily programs such as evening newscasts or breakfast shows) broadcasting for the longest length of time at a single time period each week in U.S. television history.
This move, and the addition of then-White House correspondent Dan Rather to the reporting team, made the program into a strong ratings hit and, eventually, a general cultural phenomenon. This was no less than a stunning reversal of the previously poor ratings performances of documentary programs on network television, as mentioned above. By 1976, 60 Minutes became the top-rated show on Sunday nights in the U.S. By 1979, it had achieved the number-one Nielsen rating for all television programs, unheard of before for a news broadcast in prime time. This success translated into great profits for CBS; advertising rates went from $17,000 per thirty seconds in 1975 to $175,000 in 1982.
The program sometimes does not start until after 7 p.m., due largely to CBS's live broadcast of NFL games. At the conclusion of the game, the network will end its coverage right away and air 60 Minutes in its entirety (however, on the West Coast, because the actual end of the live games is much earlier in the afternoon in comparison to the Eastern and Central time zones, 60 Minutes is always able to start at its normal start time of 7 p.m. Pacific Time, leaving affiliates free to broadcast local news, the CBS Evening News, and other local or syndicated programming leading up to 60 Minutes). The program's success has also led CBS Sports to schedule the Masters Tournament, the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, and other events leading into 60 Minutes and the rest of the network's primetime lineup, thus (again, except on the West Coast) pre-empting the Sunday editions of the CBS Evening News and affiliates' local newscasts.
Pre-emptions since 1978
The program has rarely been pre-empted since about 1978. Two notable pre-emptions occurred in 1976 and 1977, to make room for the annual telecast of The Wizard of Oz, which had recently returned to CBS after having been shown on NBC for eight years. However, CBS would, in later years, schedule the film so that it would no longer pre-empt 60 Minutes. Another exception is anytime CBS airs the Super Bowl or since 2003, alternating years where the AFC Championship Game has the 6:30 PM start time, which is played into primetime and followed by a special lead-out program.
Radio broadcast and Internet distribution
60 Minutes is also aired via CBS Radio on several of their radio stations at the same time as the television broadcast (in each station's own local market), such as WCBS-AM, KNX, WBBM-AM, WWJ, KCBS and other stations across the country owned by CBS. An audio version of the full show without advertising is also distributed via podcast and the iTunes Store, beginning with the September 23, 2007 broadcast.The program's video also streams several hours after broadcast on CBSNews.com and CBS Interactive property CNET TV.
Format
The format of 60 Minutes consists of three long-form news stories, without superimposed graphics. There is a commercial break between two stories. 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.
Story topics
Many stories 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.
Profile of the interviewee
The show also features profiles. The profiles are often 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 a heroic action or striven to improve the world.
Occasionally, if a celebrity has written a book or has a current film in release, the segment featuring them will also promote the book or film. However, the celebrity in question will always be profiled in detail, and never appears on the show simply to promote his or her product.
Reporting tone
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."
"Point/Counterpoint" segment
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 liberal, 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 in 1970, 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", in the motion picture Airplane!, in which the faux Kilpatrick argues in favor of the plane crashing, and in the earlier sketch comedy film by the same directors, The Kentucky Fried Movie, where the segment was called "Count/Pointercount".
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.
Andy Rooney segment
Since 1978, the show has usually ended with a (usually light-hearted and 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 measuring the amount of coffee in coffee cans.Rooney's pieces, particularly one in which he referred to actor Mel Gibson as a "wacko," have on occasion led to complaints from viewers.
Andy Rooney retired from 60 Minutes, delivering his final commentary on October 2, 2011. It was his 1,097th commentary over his 33 year career on 60 Minutes.
Opening sequence
The opening sequence features a 60 Minutes "magazine cover", with the signature Aristo stopwatch intercut with preview clips of the episode's stories. The sequence ends with each of the current correspondents and hosts introducing themselves. The last host who appears then says, "Those stories and Andy Rooney, tonight on 60 Minutes", followed by a final shot of the stopwatch. Before Rooney became a prominent fixture, and on days when he does not appear, the final line is "Those stories and more".
The show is the first regularly scheduled television program in American television history not to have ever used any type of theme music. The only theme sound is from the stopwatch in the opening title credits, before each commercial break, and at the tail-end of the closing credits.
On Sunday, October 29, 2006, the opening sequence changed from a black background to white. The black background had been used for over a decade. Also, the gray background for the Aristo stopwatch in the "cover" changed to red, the color for the title text changed to white and the stopwatch itself changed from its decade-old diagonal position to an upright position.
Web only content
Videos and transcripts of the show, as well as clips that did not make it to the broadcast have been available on the show's web site for several years prior to 2010. Beginning September 2010, the show launched a web site called "Sixty Minutes Overtime", in which stories broadcast on the air are discussed in further details above and beyond the broadcasted content.
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