Dimensions
155 x 202 x 22mm
The story of how CBS's '60 Minutes' grew from a little network experiment into a Sunday-night addiction for most of the country would itself make a raucous and typically compelling '60 Minutes' episode. For two years, author David Blum talked to everybody, and incredibly, everybody talked to him - about themselves, about the show, about one another. Blum's unprecedented inside access takes us into story meetings, blood-on-the-wall editing sessions, turf wars, and the rivalries and myths.
In the course of the show's four-decade history, producer-guru Don Hewitt's beloved "tigers" - correspondents Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, Lesley Stahl, Steve Kroft, Dan Rather, Diane Sawyer, Meredith Vieira, the late Harry Reasoner, and cranky essayist Andy Rooney - have become brand names and media demigods. Hidden cameras, "gotcha" interviews, in-your-face confrontational journalism - this is where it all began. And thirty-six years later, Hewitt's still there, pounding his desk, swearing at his tigers (most of whom are also still there), and holding in his tightly clenched fist the patent on the mother of all magazine shows.
Or, rather, he was, until just recently, when a bunch of younger guys in suits decided it was time to take '60 Minutes' away from its eighty-one-year-old boss. The changes, the innovations, the stop-the-presses big stories - for Hewitt, and maybe a couple of the others, they're winding down at last. But the story of the most successful and contentious program in TV history isn't over yet: the new guys are settling in and the future is up for grabs.
