In a bid to remake the nation’s top-rated information program, Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS Information, on Thursday unveiled an overhaul of “60 Minutes,” changing the present’s govt producer with a tech journalist and firing two of its on-air correspondents.
Ms. Weiss named Nick Bilton, a former New York Instances know-how columnist and a filmmaker who has directed and produced documentaries for HBO and Netflix, as her decide to guide the 58-year-old Sunday present. Mr. Bilton, who has by no means labored in conventional broadcast information, will change Tanya Simon, who had been on the present for greater than three many years.
CBS Information additionally fired Cecilia Vega, this system’s first Latina correspondent, and Sharyn Alfonsi, whose section on torture in Salvadoran prisons was pulled off the air abruptly final 12 months by Ms. Weiss, who requested extra reporting. It aired in full at a later date. Draggan Mihailovich, the chief editor of “60 Minutes,” was additionally fired, as was Matthew Polevoy, a senior producer.
Ms. Weiss, an opinion journalist with no prior expertise in tv, has made main adjustments at CBS since being appointed final 12 months by the tech scion David Ellison. She has named Tony Dokoupil to helm “CBS Night Information,” employed new on-air contributors and personally booked some friends for interviews, a departure from the business norm.
However the overhaul at “60 Minutes” is by far the biggest gamble of Ms. Weiss’s tenure. This system stays appointment viewing for hundreds of thousands each Sunday night time, and its viewership this season rose 9 % from the 12 months prior, based on Nielsen.
Ms. Weiss’s dealing with of “60 Minutes” has led to inner turmoil. Her resolution to carry Ms. Alfonsi’s section set off a firestorm, although it will definitely ran with extra feedback from the Trump administration. This week, Ms. Alfonsi told The Times that CBS was now not separating editorial independence from company pursuits.
Mr. Bilton, 49, will begin his place with a workers already anxious about how the long-held traditions of “60 Minutes” may change. In a joint interview with Ms. Weiss on Thursday, he stated that his expertise in documentary movie and TV was consistent with the founding ethos of this system, which he known as “a very powerful information model in American life.”
“Have a look at Don Hewitt and the way he got here up with the concept for this,” Mr. Bilton stated, referring to this system’s creator. “He cherished documentaries, however he didn’t have the persistence to look at two-hour-long variations of them. So he got here up with ‘60 Minutes,’ which was a sequence of brief documentaries.”
Mr. Bilton stated that the latest furor round “60 Minutes” was “simply noise,” chalking it as much as routine fallout spurred by disruption at a legacy enterprise. He added that the “finish outcome” of the change can be “fairly frankly phenomenal.”
Ms. Weiss stated that she was drawn to Mr. Bilton due to his profession telling tales on a number of platforms, together with in print, behind the digicam and in nonfiction books. She stated that his protection of know-how had given him expertise on tips on how to navigate industries like broadcast information which are present process profound disruption.
“He has been constantly prescient concerning the ways in which the technological revolution that we’re residing by means of is upending the best way that we eat storytelling and knowledge,” Ms. Weiss stated. “He has been the one to see the tsunami earlier than the wave hits the remainder of us.”
Mr. Bilton, who will relocate to New York from Los Angeles, is an unconventional selection for the “60 Minutes” job: All his predecessors have come from conventional broadcast information.
“While you take an insider and you place them inside an organization, nothing adjustments,” Mr. Bilton stated. “I’m not saying that we’re going to alter the present utterly and drastically. I’m saying that there are all these approaches and concepts that we will do this I couldn’t be extra excited to leap into. And I feel you want that outdoors imaginative and prescient to have the ability to do this.”
He stated it was too early to explain his plans for “60 Minutes” intimately, however added that he would place an emphasis on telling tales past the weekly present and experimenting with new voices from outdoors conventional broadcast information.
Mr. Bilton has had a different profession. After working as a designer at The Instances, Mr. Bilton turned a know-how columnist for the newspaper in 2009, and left in 2016 to affix Vainness Honest as a correspondent. Since then, he has labored in documentaries, writing and directing “Faux Well-known,” an HBO movie about aspiring social media influencers, and serving as a producer on “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,” a movie directed by Alex Gibney concerning the disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.
Mr. Bilton can also be set to publish a true-crime e-book a few Hawaiian crime syndicate with Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson. (He additionally wrote the screenplay for its film adaptationto be directed by Martin Scorsese.)
“60 Minutes” has been on the middle of an ongoing drama about the way forward for CBS Information.
President Trump sued CBS earlier than the election in 2024 over an interview that this system carried out with Kamala Harris, who was working in opposition to him. The community’s proprietor, Paramount, finally paid $16 million to settle the case, which many legal professionals had deemed frivolous. Tensions inside the community over how to answer Mr. Trump additionally contributed to the resignation of a “60 Minutes” govt producer, Invoice Owens, earlier than Ms. Weiss joined.
For many years, “60 Minutes” has been one thing of an imperial establishment inside CBS Information. A number of the present’s govt producers have had a direct line to the corporate’s chief govt, and its correspondents — who establish themselves by identify on the prime of the printed — operated out of places of work separate from the remainder of the community.
Ms. Vega, who joined the present in 2023, stated in an announcement on Thursday, “I very a lot worry what comes subsequent for, and the way forward for, the legendary broadcast.” She stated that in latest months, “reporting groups have held again on submitting story pitches about necessary information subjects out of worry of the interior repercussions.”
Ms. Simon, who had a 12 months remaining on her contract at CBS, wrote in a farewell memo on Thursday that “60 Minutes” was “an establishment constructed on independence, grit and rigorous seek for the reality.”
Mr. Bilton, within the interview, stated that he needed “60 Minutes” to keep up its status for independence, whereas additionally collaborating with the remainder of the information division.
“There’s unimaginable folks at CBS Information, and I feel that it’s necessary for me to have the ability to faucet into a few of them at sure occasions, and vice versa,” Mr. Bilton stated. “That doesn’t imply that it’s going to turn out to be one huge group. ‘60’ will nonetheless have its independence.”
