Make Way For the New
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Please consider, for a moment, some rather remarkable statistics that you will not find in any recent CBS News press releases.
In June 2004, the average age of the “60 Minutes” team of correspondents and its then-executive producer, Don Hewitt, was 73 years old.
In June 2006, the average age of the “60 Minutes” team and its new executive producer had dropped more than 20%, to 59 years old. If you take 86-year-old Andy Rooney out of the mix, that number drops to 56 years old. The average age of the “60 Minutes” correspondents and exec producers at the time of their removal from their positions by CBS News in the period from June 2004 to June 2006 is 83 years old.
One final statistic, also not reported by CBS News: The time elapsed between its announcement of Dan Rather’s departure from the network last Monday, and the arrival of movers to empty the 44-year veteran’s effects from his ninth-floor office above a BMW dealership on West 57th Street, was 45 minutes.
Please do not read into these statistics any desire to denigrate CBS News for its recent decisions.The network’s effort to lower the age of its correspondents – not to mention the demographics of its audience – stems from a legitimate need to keep the last remaining serious network-news television show, “60 Minutes,” alive and well. While the public outcry over CBS’s seemingly cruel treatment of Mr. Rather was understandable, it’s worth noting that Mr. Rather brought much of it on himself, by failing to recognize the need for progress and change. The former anchorman’s lack of graciousness in making way for a new generation of stars on “60 Minutes”forced the network’s harsh hand.Anyone who thinks Mr. Rather deserved to hold his place forever on the legendary newsmagazine doesn’t understand the needs of the television news business, the audience, or even the public interest.
Before he was publicly humiliated by CBS, Mr. Rather refused to accept, even at the advanced age of 74, that it might be someone else’s turn to take over the limelight at “60 Minutes.” But the time has clearly come for new, younger stars to get the same exposure that once fueled the trajectory of Mr. Rather’s stardom, and that of his recently deposed colleagues Mike Wallace and Mr. Hewitt. The news business belongs to those with the youth, energy, and ambition to deliver superior, hard-edged journalism on a daily basis. Whether they liked it or not, it was time for Messrs. Rather, Wallace, and Hewitt to go.
“Shouldn’t these people be spending more time with their grandchildren?” Jeffrey Fager asked me a few years ago, before he was appointed executive producer of “60 Minutes” to replace Don Hewitt. It seemed a reasonable question from a then 49-year-old man who himself enjoyed spending time in Connecticut with his family at nights and on weekends. The generation of television journalists that preceded Mr. Fager had no qualms about spending weeks, if not months away from home and family, preferring to devote day and night to work they considered more important than raising children, let alone grandchildren. Even after they passed mandatory retirement age, they continued to grab the spotlight as often as they could, keeping young talent at bay. For two decades, good reporters who might otherwise have gotten a spot on “60 Minutes” had to sit idly by while Mike and Dan and Morley flew around the world in pursuit of more stories, more millions, and more hours in the spotlight.
But now, under the leadership of Mr. Fager – and facing competition from NBC’s new Sunday Night Football this fall, the biggest threat ever to the venerable broadcast’s dominance of its 7 p.m. timeslot – “60 Minutes” must change, or risk losing its audience forever. And while it might not seem so to reporters wringing their hands over Mr. Rather’s fallen fortunes, the decision to replace him and Mr. Wallace with the likes of Anderson Cooper, Lara Logan, Katie Couric, and Scott Pelley represents an act of courage and risk. At long last, CBS News is daring to develop a new generation of stars to replace a team that defied the actuarial tables long enough. It remains to be seen whether any of them will measure up to Messrs. Wallace and Rather at the heights of their careers, but it’s about time “60 Minutes” got a second wind of the vigor and stamina that once made it the gold standard of television news.
Lost in the dust-up over Mr. Rather’s future was a recognition that the fate of a classic television show depends on his departure. In his farewell interview with the New York Times, Mr. Rather cloaked himself in the memory of the legendary reporter Edward R. Murrow by declaring that he’d seen “Good Night and Good Luck” five times. Did those multiple viewings not remind Mr. Rather how the television news business survived Murrow’s own unhappy parting of ways with CBS News? Indeed, six years after Murrow’s departure from CBS – an event that also prompted numerous attacks on the network for its callous pandering to youth, and the same “corporatization” of news that Mr. Rather bemoaned in his farewell statement last week – “60 Minutes” was born.
The lesson forgotten in last week’s uproar over Mr. Rather’s fate is that the news business can, and will, always survive the loss of one talented and well-paid individual, so long as it retains its commitment to the level of quality that earned his fame and fortune. In the end, Mr. Rather had to leave CBS News so that “60 Minutes” could survive – and if it does, that will have been a reasonable price to pay. Good night, Mr. Rather, and good luck, CBS.
