Jeff Fager - Fifty Years of 60 Minutes: The Inside Story of Television’s Most Influential News Broadcast

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A lmost everything at 60 Minutes involves some kind of collaboration, and this book was no exception.

It would not have happened without Tanya Simon. She was my partner in this venture, beginning with the difficult job of going through five thousand stories to help decide what ended up in the book. Her skills organizing, reporting, writing, and editing were essential every step of the way.

Tanya now knows more about 60 Minutes than she would ever want to know. Unless she is already too sick of it by now, she will be an important part of this broadcast for many years to come.

I didnt ever think of writing this book until Priscilla Painton suggested it and then edited it. Her judgment and her guidance have been steady and superb. I am also grateful for Jonathan Karps insights and observations. He runs a well-oiled operation at Simon & Schuster, and my thanks goes to that collection of talented people, including Cary Goldstein, Richard Rhorer, Cat Boyd, Jessica Breen, Jonathan Evans, and Elisa Rivlin.

Thanks to Ruth Lee-Mui for designing the book and Jackie Seow for the cover. Thanks to Megan Hogan for her fine editing work and Phillip Bashe who, with his grasp of journalism and history, was an excellent copy editor.

In addition to being a great friend, partner, and constant resource, Bill Owens, as always, made sure our broadcast kept going strong while I was distracted.

Alison Pepper is a significant part of everything we do at 60 Minutes ; not much happens without her insightful input. I am grateful for her advice and support from beginning to end.

Thanks to Steve Kroft and Lesley Stahl for their help and suggestions and also to Debbie De Luca Sheh, Claudia Weinstein, Frank Devine, and Kevin Tedesco, who helped with the book and who make 60 Minutes better every Sunday night.

Among many other things, Chrissy Jones chased down every detail before I even asked for it. Thanks also to Kara Vaccaro and Jaime Woods for their invaluable support.

So many people have contributed to this book and the broadcast who deserve mention. The fine people who do the camerawork at 60 Minutes venture into difficult and dangerous situations on a regular basis to make the broadcast better. My thanks to Chris Albert, Greg Andracke, Ray Bribiesca, Richard Butler, Dan Bussell, Billy Cassara, Ron Dean, Wim de Vos, Dennis Dillon, Chris Everson, Tom Fahey, Rob Fortunato, Ken Fuhr, Bob Goldsborough, Blake Hottle, Mark Laganga, Don Lee, Massimo Mariani, Scott Munro, Sam Painter, Jonathan Partridge, Ian Robbie, and Aaron Tomlinson, who also took many of the photographs that illustrate this book. Thanks to Tom Honeysett, Warren Lustig, and Matt Richman for running the best shop of tape editors ever assembled; Roy Halee for making all of our sound so sharp; Ann Marie Kross for staffing all of our shoots with the very best people; and Rob Klug, Alicia Tanz Flaum, and the entire crew of Control Room 33 for their friendship and dedication in making 60 Minutes work as well as it does every single week.

We will always be indebted to Don Hewitt, but I am particularly grateful to have had his book Tell Me a Story as a resource, as well as the only detailed book about 60 Minutes, Tick... Tick... Tick by David Blum.

I cant imagine taking on this project without my wife, Melinda, at my side. Her encouragement and advice have made everything I have attempted possible.

JEFF FAGER is in his fourteenth season as the Executive Producer of 60 Minutes. In 2011 he became the first chairman of CBS News and, drawing on the values of 60 Minutes, he led a revitalization of the news division, including the turnaround of CBS This Morning. He returned full-time to 60 Minutes in 2015. Fager was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He graduated from Colgate University in 1977 with a B.A. degree in English.

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In the beginning, at least, in our beginning, when we began to put shape to a new kind of television broadcast with the unlikely title of 60 Minutes, no oneleast of all usdared hope that someday wed be celebrating our twentieth anniversary.

Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes Twentieth Anniversary Special, October 10, 1988

M ike Wallace was speaking for just about everybody who worked at 60 Minutes from its beginning. They had no reason to believe their invention would last twenty years, let alone fifty, or that it would be considered one of the most successful broadcasts in television history.

In its first year, 1968, the broadcast came in 75th out of the 81 programs airing that season. It took six years and several moves to different time slots until 60 Minutes landed in its permanent spot on the schedule, Sundays at 7 p.m. Only then did it start to get traction.

By the time my generation came along, twenty years later, it had become a hit.

We will get to the very early days of the broadcast in the following chapter but this book begins at the twenty-year mark in our history because that prime decade encapsulates in many ways the reasons 60 Minutes did achieve enduring success, both through its original genius and its ability to constantly reinvent itself.

Like a lot of young producers who first arrive for work at 60 Minutes, I wasnt quite sure what to expect. But Don Hewitt settled that within a few hours on the job. We dont have meetings, and there are no memos to the staff, he told me. Just bring us good stories and everything will be all right.

There was a journalistic spirit at 60 Minutes that I felt from that first day on the job in 1989, during the twenty-first season. It was a sense that the story came first, and that the rituals and obsessions of most every other television news organization, including our own CBS News organization, did not matter so much.

Steve Kroft and Jeff Fager, photographed in 2011, started working together at 60 Minutes in 1989.

I was hired as a producer to work with Steve Kroft, the first young male correspondent since Ed Bradley had joined in 1981. There was a lot of pressure on him and on me. Could we do the kind of work expected of us? I remember Mike Wallace taunting me in the hall: Well see if you can handle it soon enough; see if youre good enough to be here. There was a twinkle in his eye, but I couldnt tell if he was kidding or not, which was a fundamental part of his appeal. He was a rascala very likeable rascalwith a big heart and a manic personality.