DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Contributors

ALEX STRACHAN

MIKE HUGHES

KIM AKASS

MONIQUE NAZARETH

ROGER CATLIN

GARY EDGERTON

TOM BRINKMOELLER

GERALD JORDAN

NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
 
 
 
FIFTY YEARS OF 60 MINUTES
December 3, 2017  | By David Bianculli

CBS, 7:00 p.m. ET

 

The title of this special hints at the unavoidable, unsolvable problem with this salute to 60 Minutes, the granddaddy of TV newsmagazines, which was launched by producer Don Hewitt and anchors Mike Wallace and Harry Reasoner in 1968. Minus commercials, that works out to about one minute of current CBS airtime for every year of 60 Minutes – one reason this special seems more like a slideshow on fast-forward than a salute to prime-time TV’s most enduring, and arguably most important, series. (By the way, for the record: If there were a great-granddaddy of TV newsmagazines, that would be another crucially important CBS series, 1951’s See It Now. Fred Friendly was the producer, Edward R. Murrow the host, and a much younger Don Hewitt, the director.) There’s not enough time spent with any one story in this 60 Minutes tribute, from its headline-making news reports to its unforgettable visits with Jackie Gleason and Muhammad Ali, to convey the polished beauty of those particular broadcast gems. But it’s a special worth watching anyway, not only as a reminder of things past, but a nudge to keep watching a show that, 50 years after it launched, continues to land in the weekly Top 10 with its well-timed, deeply researched interviews. Oh, and there’s a brief but fun bonus in this new special: In addition to the familiar opening footage from the premiere edition of 60 Minutes in 1958, we see formerly unshown footage of the moments just before Wallace and Reasoner opened the show – when Reasoner casually flung his cigarette across the studio and out of camera view. For a full review, see David Hinckley’s All Along the Watchtower.

 
 
 
 
 
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