If "60 Minutes" dies, it's not murder, it's slow suicide

Scott Pelley reminds us what the elite journos think of their shrinking audience

Scott Pelley is unemployed, but he will be just fine. He spoke his mind about the new executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Nick Bilton, refused all olive branches extended, for the two men to meet privately, and Bilton fired him, “for cause.” Pelley walked away from an estimated $5 million a year, a sum he’s likely made for decades as the anchor of “CBS Evening News” and his tenure at “60 Minutes.” I doubt Pelly will even have to sell his Manhattan pied-à-terre at the tony Oculus Building in Flatiron, for which he paid a measly $2.25 million in 2016 (a steal!).

Pelley, 68, could have retired to his former Connecticut estate, an 8,000 square foot, five-bedroom, seven-bath home on 2.4 acres—well no, he couldn’t. He sold it in 2021, at a loss of $1.25 million; Pelley paid $4 million for it in 2007. He now lives at a 24-acre ranch in Texas, which Page Six reportedly was told was a “vacation home” when he bought it in 2016. As Jonah Goldberg likes to say, Pelley is one of those rich journalist celebrities who like to piss on his audience from a great height while enjoying all the benefits of their generosity in making his career in television.

(Also, I wonder about the timing of Pelley, along with so many other wealthy celebrities, fleeing the northeast for the tax haven of Texas. But that’s a different story.)

I am old enough to remember Dan Rather, the pater familias of “60 Minutes” throwing away the entire book of journalistic ethics in order to try to throw an election against George Bush. I mean George H.W. Bush, who was Vice President at the time. Rather had Bush on for a live interview, and ambushed him with the Iran-Contra scandal. Bush heatedly replied: “I want to talk about why I’m qualified to be President, not a rehash of an eight-minute segment on Iran.” That made Rather, and “60 Minutes” no friend of the Bush family.

Again in 2004, Rather hit George W. Bush, just two months before the election, with blockbuster accusations of playboy treatment by his Texas Air National Guard unit. The evidence was documents signed by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, Bush’s commanding officer, who at the time, had died so he could not validate or invalidate the documents. CBS’s fact-checkers knew the documents were not authentic before Rather’s broadcast, but nobody wanted to be steamrolled by the anchor. Rather didn’t care; he pressed on, hoping the controversy would sink the second Bush.

Neither time did Rather’s political chicanery succeed.

It’s well-known and backed by data that “60 Minutes” leans left.

Chart: ad fontes media

They aren’t hyper-partisan left, but they border on strong left. “60 Minutes” plots about even with “PBS News Hour,” but lower on the “Reliability” axis than either PBS or CNN’s “The Situation Room.” The only major network shows that are further left—and also less reliable—are Anderson Cooper and anything on MSNBC (MS NOW). It’s also interesting, but not unexpected, that the chart would be a horseshoe: the more extreme a show on either side, the less reliable its news and content.

Ratings-wise, the show has not done badly. It remains No. 3 on CBS with an audience of between six and nine million, skewed mostly toward older viewers, though some episodes hit well in the 25-54 demographic. “60 Minutes” is a solid performer for the network. The problem for Paramount is that CBS is a television network, and its news division had been run like a television network, one that had been airing for 85 years.

For the generations of viewers coming up today, network television is effectively dead. You can even watch the Super Bowl on YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, or NBC’s Peacock service. Gen-Y and Alpha are not going to sit in front of a television and watch a show. To be future-proofed, CBS has to appeal to a wider audience, or at least that’s what the suits at Paramount Skydance think. Paramount+ is competing with Netflix, Disney+, Max, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Peacock. CBS has a solid sports lineup, but its news division is old and faded compared to the rest of the business.

The new owners brought in Bari Weiss to shake things up and change the direction of the news division toward a wider (read: younger) audience. And Bari Weiss brought in Nick Bilton, who has strong media chops in the documentary, investigative, and digital space. But Scott Pelley didn’t like Bilton’s pedigree (or his politics, apparently).

“60 Minutes” could continue exactly as it was, and watch the slow erosion of its audience as they age out. It could morph into a zombie, posting segments to YouTube (giving its ad revenue away to Alphabet), and become just another voice in the wind, competing with Mr. (Matt) Beat, Marques Brownlee, and Peter Santenello. Or it could leverage its considerable assets and be a leader, but that means shedding the 85-year-old model and doing things differently.

I can’t attest to Bari Weiss’s, or CBS News President Tom Cibrowski’s vision under Paramount Skydance, but it’s certainly not crazy or beholden to MAGA, or “right wing,” unless the person making those claims is themselves further left than the show’s reporting. I think Scott Pelley tend to side with Dan Rather on that score.

Instead of accepting the change, Scott Pelley would rather retire to his comfortable Texas ranch. He could have done it with less drama. Perhaps the drama might help—there’s no such thing as bad media, says people like Roger Stone.

“60 Minutes” is not dying. But if it does die, it won’t be Bari Weiss or Nick Bilton who killed it. It would be the long, slow suicide of network news.

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