The Hour That’s Lasted for 24 Years : ’60 Minutes’ Confounds the Demographers

It’s one thing to win a ratings race, but quite another to break the mold.

When CBS’ Sunday news magazine, “60 Minutes,” came in No. 1 in prime time for the so-called official ratings season that ended April 12, it set a standard that likely never will be broken:

“60 Minutes” now has finished No. 1 in three decades. It took its first crown in the 1979-80 season, its second in 1982-83 and its third for 1991-92.

What’s more, it now has ranked in the Top 10 series for an astounding 15 consecutive years. For 11 of those years, it has been in the Top 5.

“I don’t know the formula for success,” says executive producer Don Hewitt, the guiding force of the series, “but I do know the formula for failing: resting on your laurels.”

“60 Minutes,” which will be a quarter of a century old next year, not only refuses to act its age, it has made a mockery of Madison Avenue’s demographic gurus by destroying the youth-oriented TV competition that advertisers prefer.

In recent years alone, “60 Minutes” has pulverized “The Adventures of Mark and Brian,” “True Colors,” “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose,” “Life Goes On,” “21 Jump Street,” “Punky Brewster” and “Silver Spoons.”

While most local and national TV news programs favor bright, young visages, “60 Minutes” is riding high with one of the oldest on-air teams of personalities in the business.

And, unlike many of the actors with whom they compete, the stars don’t hide their ages. In fact, CBS is only too willing to disclose them.

Mike Wallace, the dean of “60 Minutes” correspondents, will be 74 next month. Andy Rooney is 73. Morley Safer is 60. Ed Bradley and Lesley Stahl are 50. And Steve Kroft is the kid of the on-air staff at 46.

Harry Reasoner, another “60 Minutes” veteran, died last August at age 68.

Hewitt, meanwhile, is 69 and says that his contract runs until he is 74.

“It’s the best staff of broadcast journalists anywhere on Earth,” he says. And he has a firm view of precisely what he expects that staff to do:

“Their job is to shed light on the times in which we live, not the news of the day or necessarily of the week.”

Hewitt feels that “60 Minutes” is not merely a ratings phenomenon: “The biggest tribute to (the staff) is that the broadcast has changed the face of TV.”

He thinks it influenced not only the creation of “20/20” and “PrimeTime Live,” but also such series as “Inside Edition” and “Hard Copy” as well as the Oprah Winfrey, Phil Donahue and Arsenio Hall shows.

He’s clearly talking about form here, not necessarily quality, but the point--regarding the dramatic rise in television’s news and reality programs along with controversial and colorful interview series--is well-taken.

“TV used to be 90% entertainment and 10% reality,” says Hewitt. “Today it’s getting closer to 50-50. The (TV) cost accountants watched ’60 Minutes’ and said this is the way to no longer be beholden to Hollywood.”

Noting that ABC is planning to counterprogram “60 Minutes” with another news magazine in the coming fall season, he adds: “It’s got to be cheaper than what else they put on. But if it doesn’t work, what have they done to their Sunday night?”

“Life Goes On,” a fine drama series about a family with a son who has Down’s syndrome, has been ABC’s competition against “60 Minutes,” which averaged 36% of the national TV audience in its weekly outings during the 1991-92 semester.

Probably the highest-profile story of the current “60 Minutes” season was Kroft’s post-Super Bowl interview with Gov. Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, about the private life of the presidential candidate.

With things going great guns, Hewitt has no plans for calling it a day.

“Why? These old guys here have just proved they can make it in three decades. You know, I keep hearing about demographics, but the country is getting older. I think they’re thinking the wrong way. We make it with kids on college campuses and homemakers and hard hats.”

What about possible changes for “60 Minutes”?

“None,” says Hewitt. “If they want anything different, they’ll have to get somebody else because I don’t know how to do it any different. I’d be the first to admit when I’m slowing down, but I’m not. Will (the series) live forever? Well, did you ever think Pan Am would disappear? The Saturday Evening Post?”

Wallace says he’s sticking around too: “As soon as I feel I can’t do the job or anybody else feels that I can’t do the job, I’m out.”

He admits the series “went soft about five years ago” and “we really set out to recruit new people. I think we were tired. There was a willingness to admit we’d gotten a little sclerotic--whether it was smugness or not enough competition.

“We each used to do about 35 or 37 pieces a year. Now we do about 22 to 24. The realization came that we just had to get our act a little tighter. And there was a time when we did the ambush (interviews) and stood a chance of becoming a caricature of ourselves, and we laid off that.

“We got some fresh reportorial blood. These are the people who do the hard work. I’ll do six, eight or 10 days on a story on which a reporter has spent six, eight or 10 weeks.”

Adds Wallace: “This place has been renewed--not just with Kroft and Stahl (who joined “60 Minutes” last year), but with a lot of producers and researchers who are hungry and resourceful. The past season is as good as we ever had. Bradley has never been better. Lesley has been extraordinary--she’s going to do about 20 pieces in her first season.”

Stahl, a longtime Washington correspondent, says she had felt that “my career was narrowing. And this has been the happiest year of my life professionally. I mean it. I’ve gone from a person who produces a minute-and-a-half (report) from a day’s work to segments of 15 and 20 minutes. It’s challenging, but the subject is the world.”

Hewitt, says Stahl, practiced “preventive medicine” on her by telling her: “Now, you’re not coming here to give me a lot of Washington stories.” She says he believes that “what makes ’60 Minutes’ work is that all of us do all kinds of stories.”

For Hewitt, who once directed Edward R. Murrow’s great “See It Now” series, “60 Minutes” has also become the stuff of TV legend. And his amazing band of veterans shows no sign of turning into the over-the-hill gang.

Top Ranking, Ratings The hour news show “60 minutes” has ranked in the Top 10 for the last 15 seasons, with corresponding high ratings for each season. It is the most-watched news program ever and prime-time television’s longest-running broadcast still in production. The program has ended the season in the No. 1 spot three times and has been No. 2 four times. Source: A.C. Nielsen Co.