All of these things are simultaneously true:
-60 Minutes is the most watched news program in the country. Even with all of the changes in media consumption, it still attracts 9 million viewers per week via “linear” (traditional) TV. That’s triple the audience of the highest-rated opinion-disguised-as-news Fox News Channel evening programming and as much as nine times the audience of the average nightly CNN program.
-It really has no peers, as Dateline NBC and 20/20 have long transformed into “true crime” shows.
-The show’s brand has reflected trust in its correspondents, as the program begins with introductions in the way an All-Star game does in any sport.
-60 Minutes’ average audience is reportedly 65, so it’s ripe for evolution. Executives should be thinking about how to extend the brand and the product through platforms that could expand its reach to new and younger audiences.
-Respected professionals inside CBS have been trying – even pleading – to tell us for months that new leadership at the company has a mandate to placate the President of the United States.
-Last week, CBS fired the executive producer of 60 Minutes and terminated two correspondents. The show’s new executive producer has a background in tech reporting and documentary production but has no traditional TV news experience. He reports to a CBS News chief, Bari Weiss, with a background in opinion writing and no previous TV news experience.
-In recent weeks, CBS has ended both The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and its best-in-class radio news network.
Amid that backdrop of reality, Scott Pelley, one of the stars of 60 Minutes, after pushing back hard in a staff meeting that was leaked publicly, was fired by the new 60 Minutes executive producer at the end of his second day on the job.
For those not close to “The Business,” Pelley isn’t just another talking head. He is, without question, one of the most respected active broadcast journalists. He is a marquee name on a very short list. In addition to his fearless reporting, he’s also known within the industry as a “team player.” What he did in that meeting, where he aggregated the voices of his colleagues, to question those in power with the facts, is the ideal of journalism. The fact he had to do it inside the walls of his employer speaks more to the culture of the company than anything.
At the risk of a post here that’s too long, I encourage you to read Pelley’s words from the hours after his firing:
“There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.
The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58th season, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.
’60’ has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.
The waste is heartbreaking.
Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.
For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.
At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to ‘keep up the good fight.’ Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.
I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.”
This is not evolution. This is a form of destruction. CBS leadership has created one PR crisis after another with no end in sight. As someone who has been in and around broadcast news since Bari Weiss was in elementary school, this is as sad of a day as the profession has experienced. None of the company’s answers will satisfy audiences who care. And, while not everybody will, everybody should. When 60 Minutes, as we knew it, is gone, it will still but needed but can not and will not be replaced.