60 Minutes

Proved news magazine could be prime-time entertainment and a Nielsen bully.

Why it matters

Episode guide

767 episodes across 52 seasons — season-by-season catalog (titles and dates, not a recap dump).

At a glance

Tick, tick, tick — CBS's 60 Minutes turned the stopwatch into a weapon and the newsmagazine into a Nielsen bully. Since 1968, and especially as an 1980s prime-time force, it mixed investigative pieces, profiles, and commentator segments with correspondent star power (Wallace, Safer, Rather, Bradley, Rooney's endnotes). Ambush interviews and gotcha lore made Mike Wallace a fearsome brand. It proved news could own Sunday night like entertainment. The stopwatch still runs.

Network & studio

• CBS — broadcast network
• CBS Productions — production studio

Why watch now

The template of TV newsmagazine power — for the craft of the package and the history of broadcast investigation. Appointment news before the infinite scroll.

Cultural impact

60 Minutes made investigative newsmagazine television a mass-prime-time product and a corporate profit center. Its correspondents became household names on par with anchors. Every later TV investigation segment still rents the stopwatch's shadow.

Creators

Don Hewitt

Key cast

• Mike Wallace as Correspondent
• Morley Safer as Correspondent
• Harry Reasoner as Correspondent
• Ed Bradley as Correspondent
• Diane Sawyer as Correspondent

Flash facts

• CBS newsmagazine on air since 1968; a frequent top-10 Nielsen show in the 1980s.
• Created by Don Hewitt.
• Signature structure: multiple segments per hour with a stopwatch motif.
• Long associated with correspondents such as Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, and others across eras.
• Defined the prime-time TV newsmagazine grammar copied worldwide.

FAQ

Back to the decade

More from the 1980s — Glitz, Soaps & Nighttime Neon. All shows.