‘60 MINUTES’ HEAD PROPOSES TV NEWS COOPERATIVE

Don Hewitt, executive producer of CBS’ top-rated “60 Minutes,” on Friday proposed creation of a foreign TV news cooperative to cover stories, reduce overseas newsgathering costs and free network correspondents for “more original reporting.”

Hewitt made the proposal in a speech prepared for delivery at the closing banquet of the annual Radio and Television News Directors convention in Orlando, Fla.

The veteran producer said that what he was proposing could be called Associated Television and be set up “under the umbrella of the Associated Press,” a wire service cooperative serving print and broadcast operations worldwide.

He obviously anticipated criticism from industry members and critics who might argue that his idea would make the CBS, NBC and ABC news programs even more similar than they are now.

“Would such a plan homogenize the three of us?” he asked. “Just the opposite. Free at last from having to provide our own coverage of every river that overflows its banks and every firefight that overruns some border, we could begin to use our best people to do more original reporting. . . .”

And, he said, that would make the network newscasts “look different from each other.” More important, he added, it would make them “different from the local newscasts that precede us.”

Officials at ABC News and NBC News said that Hewitt had not approached them about his proposal. But the idea isn’t new, said Richard C. Wald, senior vice president at ABC News: “It’s one of the ideas we’ve been kicking around here for a while, and if you look at our business, it looks reasonable and simple.”

However, he added, “it’d be difficult to put together, particularly with three competing entities such as ours. Also, you might think you’d save money with a cooperative, and you might. But you also might spend as much as you save, simply putting the thing together.”

Several years ago, then-CBS News president Van Gordon Sauter discussed with Associated Press the idea of forming a joint overseas venture for covering foreign news. However, the idea was quickly dropped upon objections from some members of the AP cooperative--including ABC News and CBS News.

Hewitt seemed to be seeking to avoid such objections by proposing a TV news cooperative in which all three network news organizations would be members.