The Clock Is Ticking to Pull Off an Entirely New ‘60 Minutes’

In the early days of CBS News, Edward R. Murrow led programs like Person to Person and See It Now from CBS’ Manhattan studios in Grand Central Terminal.

The network would eventually depart Grand Central for the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th street (what was once the CBS space in the train terminal is now a tennis club), but the network’s history in the building is the stuff of news lore.

So it makes some level of sense that when CBS News was contemplating where to stage a correspondent photo for its rebooted 60 Minutes, it would take the elevator downstairs to the Terminal’s basement, turning the gilded dining room of the Grand Central Oyster Bar into its studio.

CBS News, led by editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, needs the new 60 Minutes to work. Its success or its failure could define her tenure at the network.

The overhaul was the talk of the business earlier this summer, with its EP and a slew of senior producers exiting, and high-profile correspondents choosing to exit (Anderson Cooper) or unceremoniously shown the door (Scott Pelley, Sharyn Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega).

60 Minutes is the most-watched news program in America, and if it slipped and lost that title in the wake of the overhaul, it would be an embarrassment to the news division.

That may be why CBS is playing it so safe as it prepares to debut its new season this Sunday. In the correspondent photo from the Oyster Bar, it is four familiar faces front and center: Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim, as well as Norah O’Donnell, who is moving from a contributor to a correspondent. The other new correspondents, as well as new EP Nick Bilton, are off to either side.

The inaugural trailer, which features the tagline “It’s Time,” features those four correspondents front and center too, providing familiar faces to viewers.

On Wednesday, video billboards began to play in Times Square on the outside of Paramount’s building, ending with the quote “It’s time to see for yourself,” as if daring viewers to see just how radically different… or not… the show is.

“I’m sure the first Sunday will be a banger. Shows three, four, and five could get quite interesting, I think,” says Wendy McMahon, the former president of CBS News and Stations, speaking at the Status Summit Wednesday in New York.

McMahon’s suggestion, of course, is that the show has been dealt a brain drain since it last debuted new episodes. Enormous effort will be put into the new season, but with so many tenured producers and correspondents out, and so many new names in, it remains to be seen if they will be able to pull off the overhaul this year, or if more seasoning will be required.

“The reality is that there was a lot of institutional knowledge that either walked out or was escorted out the door, and so much of what makes 60 Minutes 60 Minutes is its DNA,” McMahon said. “So, am I concerned that the DNA of 60 Minutes is being rewritten in real time? Am I concerned that in the quest to transform, that the problem has been misdiagnosed, and we are potentially changing, dismantling the very thing we are meant to protect? Yes, I am absolutely concerned, but I will stop short of weighing in on the death of 60 Minutes until I see this next 60 Minutes.”

One thing that is clear: The secret sauce of 60 Minutes remains unchanged: It will still have the familiar three segment format, and it will still launch after the NFL late afternoon window, which many in the industry see as the driving force behind its ratings dominance. As THR noted early this year, the show has long been defined by its format and timeslot, and while the correspondents are familiar faces, the show has always been an ensemble, unlike most TV news programs which are star-driven.

As in previous years, one of the segments (likely the first one, if history is a guide) will be sports-related, in this case a feature on the Los Angeles Rams, including an interview with coach Sean McVay. There is also an exclusive interview with the U.S. pilot who was rescued behind enemy lines in Iran, and a third segment yet to be revealed.

They are, to be blunt, completely typical 60 Minutes segments (though the access-driven Pentagon story, including an interview with Secretary Pete Hegseth, is sure to raise eyebrows). Though as McMahon suggested, the first episode will put the show’s best face forward. She says she left CBS News in part because “I had enough of an understanding of the plan moving forward for CBS News and for 60 Minutes, and I knew that I could not lead or own that plan, not journalistically, and not from a business strategy perspective.”

In fact, many of Bilton’s coming “innovations” seem like throwbacks to previous eras of the show. He told THR after his hiring that he wanted to bring some “gonzo journalism” to the show, with The New York Times reporting that hidden camera segments are among those in the works (they used to be used sparingly in the show’s distant past). He also teased a new end-of-show segment, and while he was coy on what it is, there had been reports that CBS had approached people like Jerry Seinfeld (whose daughter works at The Free Press), John McEnroe, and Stephen A. Smith about some sort of Andy Rooney-esque commentary segment.

A TV news source speculated that the show may revive the “Point/Counterpoint” debate segment that the show had in the 1970s, with liberal and conservative pundits debating a contentious issue.

But the coming iteration of 60 Minutes has, for better or worse, become culture war fodder, only ramping up the stakes.

Guy Campanile, the show’s former managing editor, who was among those shown the door earlier this year by Weiss, wrote on Facebook this week that the team that was ousted “refused to be accomplices in the destruction of the most prestigious news program on American television.”

Heavy stuff, though not everyone agreed that Weiss’ move to overhaul the show is out of bounds.

Brian Williams, the former NBC Nightly News anchor who briefly hosted a 60 Minutes-esque newsmagazine called Rock Center, said at the Status Summit: “Could 60 Minutes use a new coat of paint? Yep.”

“I always found it curious that a news broadcast took the summer off. That dates back to Don Hewitt loving tennis, and he played tennis from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and then they went back to work. Apparently, news stops during those months, so I’d like to see a 52-week-a-year broadcast,” he continued. “But you know, talent decisions are talent decisions and ditto producers. We all came to work every day knowing that it could be our last and keeping our resumes fresh. It’s a tough business. These jobs still tend to be overpaid. They still tend to be indoor work… So we’re all riding the wave.”

Even inside CBS News well before David Ellison’s takeover of Paramount, the independence of 60 Minutes was seen as a blessing and a curse. The show was the best in its category, but was slower than others to adopt to changing consumer habits, though it was working on some digital initiatives when Weiss took over CBS News.

A former senior executive at CBS said that suggestions from corporate to the show’s producers were often brushed aside in the pre-Weiss era, even if they were made in good faith and with what they believed were the best interests of the show in mind.

And while it may seem obvious to many in the industry that shaking up the most-watched news show in America is a crazy move, it is not universally so.

When pressed by Oliver Darcy at the Status Summit about the firing of Pelley, the former NBC News, CNN and CNBC producer Jonathan Wald quipped “you’ve got to break some eggs to make an omelette,” to a couple of gasps from the crowd.

“I have a hugely contrarian view of three things: I’m not afraid of AI necessarily. I’m not really afraid of data centers because I think at some point no one’s going to need them. Like, we don’t need a giant Texas Instruments calculator. It’s all going to shrink, and they’ll use them for skate parks or housing or something,” Wald said. “And I don’t think Bari Weiss is automatically bad for the news business.”

But when it comes to 60 Minutes, that ticking clock won’t stop. One way or another, the show must go on. CBS News and Paramount executives, meanwhile, are crossing their fingers that those NFL viewers stick around too.