When the famous stopwatch starts its familiar ticking on Sunday night for the premiere of the 59th season of “60 Minutes,” the graphics will look a little sleeker. The correspondents roster will include fresh faces. And a new segment will eventually cap the final minute of the broadcast.
The tinkering is part of a promised overhaul of the program from the show’s new executive producer, Nick Bilton, who took over the most-watched news show in America in May amid a shake-up orchestrated by Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News. Much of the show’s leadership was purged, and some of its most recognizable correspondents either were fired or quit.
While the core DNA of “60 Minutes” is intact, Mr. Bilton has begun to put his stamp on the show with dozens of small changes designed to modernize it for its sixth decade.
“Over the summer, we’ve made changes to every aspect of the broadcast to make it stronger,” Mr. Bilton, 50, said in an interview in his office across from the CBS Broadcast Center in Midtown Manhattan. “While each of those changes represents a slight departure from the way it’s been done in the past, it will make for a new approach to ‘60 Minutes’ in its totality.”
This summer, Mr. Bilton sat the camera operators down and told them to avoid “walk and talks” — run-of-the-mill TV shots featuring a correspondent and the subject. He has done away with the fuzzy shadow under the “60 Minutes” logo, and replaced the giant “book” graphics that appear behind correspondents before each new segment with streamlined rectangular screens. Also in the works is a story using footage from a hidden camera, a throwback to stories from the famed “60 Minutes” correspondent Mike Wallace, who used them to expose fraudsters.
Mr. Bilton also has something new planned for the end of the show, launching later this season, though he won’t say what. (“You’re going to have to tune in for the new season,” he said.)
The premiere will be a test for Mr. Bilton and Ms. Weiss. For decades, “60 Minutes” has delivered high-impact reporting to millions of Americans. The shake-up this spring has led to heightened scrutiny of the program after several former correspondents accused Ms. Weiss of trying to insert political bias into the show. The network has denied those claims.
In December, for example, Ms. Weiss pulled a story about Venezuelan men deported to a Salvadoran prison shortly before it aired, saying it needed more reporting. Sharyn Alfonsi, the correspondent who reported the segment, accused Ms. Weiss of a “political” move. (The segment later aired in full, with additional comments from the Trump administration. CBS News declined to renew Ms. Alfonsi’s contract in May.)
The show has nailed down at least one major exclusive interview for its premiere, two people familiar with the episode said. One of the officers aboard an F-15 fighter jet shot down in April over Iran, known by the call sign “Dude 44,” spoke with the “60 Minutes” correspondent Norah O’Donnell for his first on-camera interview since his rescue, the people said. The episode will also include a profile by the correspondent Jon Wertheim of the Los Angeles Rams, a Super Bowl favorite this season.
At the “60 Minutes” offices on Monday, sitting below a board counting down the hours until the premiere, Ross Douthat, a former columnist and podcaster for The New York Times, said he was working on stories involving politics and artificial intelligence. Bill Whitaker, a “60 Minutes” veteran, had just spent two weeks in Ukraine. Gianna Toboni, a former senior correspondent at Vice, appeared on a propped-up laptop screen, Zooming in before she boarded a plane for her first international shoot.
The road to the premiere has been difficult. In June, during Mr. Bilton’s introductory meeting with staff, he was grilled by the star correspondent Scott Pelley about the firing of the show’s former executive producer, Tanya Simon, along with the ouster of two correspondents, Cecilia Vega and Ms. Alfonsi. Mr. Pelley was fired the next day.
Ensuing coverage of the fallout was nonstop. But it underscored “how important we are to our audience,” said Maria Gavrilovic, one of the show’s executive editors.
The firings sent Mr. Bilton scrambling to reassure the show’s remaining veteran correspondents — Mr. Wertheim, Mr. Whitaker and Lesley Stahl — that he would keep the fundamental principles of the show intact. He had dinner with Ms. Stahl, pledging to preserve the show’s journalistic rigor, and sent an email to staff promising that “60 Minutes” would remain editorially independent of its parent company, Paramount, run by the tech heir David Ellison. All three ultimately stayed, saying in an email to the staff that they did so to keep “60 Minutes” from dying.
In an interview on Monday, Mr. Whitaker said he had spoken to Ms. Weiss about the concerns of her interfering with the program. She told him to “call her on it” if he noticed a problem, he said.
“She said she didn’t see it as interference,” Mr. Whitaker said. “She thought she was being helpful. And if I don’t think she’s being helpful, and I see it as interference, that I should just call her on it. So we shall see.”
Mr. Bilton has begun to rethink some of the show’s traditions. The “blue sheet” system, a decades-old process for pitching stories, is being updated to ensure that producers and correspondents include descriptions of each segment’s video and photography. He has switched out the lenses in the cameras, told producers to focus on building compelling scenes and is transitioning the show into 4k resolution.
Is President Trump fair game? “One thousand percent,” Mr. Bilton said, along with “everyone else in Washington, regardless of which side you’re on.”
Mr. Bilton and Ms. Gavrilovic have also tried to encourage collaboration among the famously competitive staff at “60 Minutes.” The show is also working more with CBS News, bringing a data expert into its 57th Street offices. In the past, teamwork between the two newsrooms was comparatively rare.
Mr. Bilton has traded in the executive producer’s spacious corner office for a new workspace midway between the producers and the correspondents, and both he and Ms. Gavrilovic have dropped into editing suites to help shepherd nascent stories, Mr. Bilton said.
Asked about the pressure before the premiere, Mr. Bilton, a documentary filmmaker and a former journalist for The Times and Vanity Fair, said it had been calming. Though he hadn’t worked in traditional broadcast news before joining “60 Minutes,” he described that lack of experience as an “asset” that allowed him to view the show through fresh eyes.
“The stress is like a snow globe that has settled, and I can see exactly what we have to do,” Mr. Bilton said. “I‘ve never felt more that I’m in the right place doing the right job than I do right now.”
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