QUICK TAKES - Oct. 20, 2009

At the end, there were too many stories to keep television news pioneer Don Hewitt’s memorial service to 60 minutes.

A CBS News lifer who created “60 Minutes” and ran TV’s first newsmagazine from 1968 to 2004, Hewitt died in August of pancreatic cancer at age 86. Only a month after a public memorial service for Walter Cronkite, CBS brought many of its old-timers back on Monday to pay tribute to Hewitt in New York.

He was described as a quick and curious showman who maintained a childlike enthusiasm for life and his work, whose credo for stories big and small was “tell me a story.”

Joan Ganz Cooney, a friend who helped create “Sesame Street,” said Hewitt ranked with CBS newscasters Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, and ABC executive Roone Arledge as the four most important men in the development of TV news.

“They’re the ones who showed what television news could be,” Cooney said. “They’re the ones that others followed.”