‘60 Minutes II’ Wins Evening in First Outing

Wednesday’s premiere of “60 Minutes II” drew more than 17 million viewers, emerging as the night’s most-watched program, but NBC’s rival “Dateline” tried to throw some cold water on the celebration.

For “60 Minutes II” the audience more than doubled what CBS has averaged this season in the 9 p.m. time slot, previously occupied by the drama “To Have and to Hold.”

But in calls to reporters, “Dateline” said that one of the heavily promoted CBS stories had previously been covered extensively by “Dateline.”

The story in question was Dan Rather’s report on Krasnoyarsk-26, a secret city in Siberia where the Russians produce weapons-grade plutonium. As Rather reported, experts fear the plutonium will someday make its way into a bomb in the hands of a country such as Libya.

Rather described special reporter George Crile as “the first American journalist to enter Krasnoyarsk-26 with a television crew.” The report included extensive footage that Crile and his crew obtained from inside the plutonium factory.

“Dateline” pointed to its own December 1994 piece on the smuggling of Russian plutonium, by correspondent Fred Francis. Though Francis didn’t get inside the plant, he did report from the city, and NBC aired footage of the plant taken by “an expatriate Russian filmmaker.”

CBS dismissed the sniping from its rival.

“ ‘60 Minutes II’ advanced this important international story by gaining access to the plant in Krasnoyarsk-26 where plutonium is being manufactured,” CBS said in a statement. “No other American journalist has gained this access. We are proud of the report and we are very disappointed that NBC has gone to such great lengths to disparage a strong piece of journalism from one of its competitors.”