by David Blum
After the meeting with Hewitt, Heyward thought he had at least the understanding, if not support, of Hewitt to push forward with a plan for Scheffler to leave at the end of the 2001–2002 season, an act to be followed at the end of the 2002–2003 season by the retirement of Hewitt himself.
But then—in a move that took management by surprise, after weeks of friendly retirement talks between Scheffler and management Scheffler seemed to change his mind about leaving. At that point, according to Safer, Hewitt (to the annoyance of management, which knew differently) acted as though he knew nothing of CBS’s intention to get rid of Scheffler. The correspondents were unnerved by the idea of Scheffler leaving so soon; they knew Hewitt couldn’t function without him around. As long as Hewitt remained in charge, 60 Minutes needed Scheffler to function as a buffer between Hewitt and the outside world—and them.
Word of the correspondents’ concern filtered back to Heyward, who called a meeting in his office. The meeting was to deal specifically with a retirement plan for Phil Scheffler, but hovering in the background was the matter of the eventual departure of Hewitt himself.
“Scheffler’s hard to deal with,” Heyward explained to the group, shortly after they settled in his office. Heyward had always been appreciated by many as a plainspoken, intelligent man, but this observation made no obvious inroad with the correspondents.
“Of course he’s hard to deal with,” Andy Rooney said “We’re all hard to deal with.”
Both knew that wasn’t what Heyward meant. He was trying to address a deeper issue between him and 60 Minutes than the obvious personality quirks of its staff. As the head of a news division that had seen its profits erode year after year, Heyward was looking for any way possible to make 60 Minutes a more highly rated, less expensive show. Getting rid of Scheffler (and then Hewitt) would accomplish two main goals: it would lower the salary budget of 60 Minutes and open the avenues of communication between CBS News management and the people who shape the show.
“Don doesn’t function without Phil. Phil makes it possible for Don to be Don,” one correspondent explained. “To get rid of him is a huge mistake.” The two men functioned as more than just a team, the correspondents told Heyward. Scheffler operated as a governor on Hewitt’s impulses; without him, Hewitt might easily spin out of control.
Heyward and the correspondents agreed on this much: Hewitt couldn’t care less about an orderly transition and would probably be just as happy if 60 Minutes died on the same day he did. That was the common ground of self-interest that led Heyward to assemble this group, without Hewitt, in the hopes that together they could pull off a management shift to keep 60 Minutes alive—and somehow manage to preserve, for the future, the oldest and still most successful news show on CBS.
Chapter 23
All Due Respect
Ever since the 1970s, the staff of 60 Minutes had enjoyed a peculiar perk not shared by anyone else at CBS News or anywhere else in the world of television news. It was one treasured by all those who worked there, described in hushed, reverent tones as perhaps the single best thing about the job: the July vacation. Instead of everyone juggling to squeeze rest into the tiny gaps between the constant editing, reporting, and traveling that came with producing 30 fresh episodes of 60 Minutes every season, they all waited until the season ended in June, then shut down the office completely and took off. After three decades of this, the vacation period had recently begun to slide backward, extending into late June. By mid-June of 2002, many 60 Minutes employees were already taking long lunches, going shopping in the afternoons, and solidifying travel plans. By July 1, the office was completely shut down except for a skeleton crew in place for emergencies. Otherwise, everyone had disappeared.
But on July 6, 2002, an article appeared in TV Guide that disrupted the vacations of several members of the 60 Minutes team. The article, headlined “The Clock’s Ticking,” carried a telling subtitle: “CBS Insiders Suggest 60 Minutes Has Lost the Old Hewitt Edge.” The piece, written by J. Max Robins, contended (based on anonymous quotes from a “CBS insider,” a “60 Minutes insider,” and a “Hewitt supporter”) that 60 Minutes II was “journalistically sharper” and speculated that its executive producer, Jeffrey Fager, would have control of both shows by the 2003–2004 season. This marked the first time Heyward’s plan for an eventual transition had made it into print. Despite vehement denials from CBS management, it was clear that someone with a lot of inside information—someone who wanted Hewitt out—had talked to Robins.
The most explosive elements of the story were the news that the Fager succession plan was already in place and the suggestion that Hewitt would not accept a forced retirement from his job without a fight. “Everybody would like an orderly transition, but Don may not make that so easy,” Robins quoted his ubiquitous “CBS insider” source, characterized as neither a friend nor a foe of Hewitt. “[CBS News president Andrew] Heyward knows this all too well, so he’s been tiptoeing around the situation for months.” The article even mentioned the specifics of Heyward’s plan to put 60 Minutes II senior producer Patti Hassler in charge of day-to-day operations for that show, while 60 Minutes senior producer Josh Howard would handle similar duties for the flagship show. It even reported Scheffler’s imminent retirement—which had been pushed back, after all the protest, until June 2003.
Months later, after constant steaming to colleagues and friends about the TV Guide article and Heyward’s plans to remove him as executive producer, Hewitt at last decided to go public with his campaign to keep his job. He invited Jim Rutenberg, a television reporter for the New York Times, to his office on November 19, 2002, for an interview in which he handed the reporter a blueprint for his planned defense strategy. He was hoping to garner public outrage of the sort that surfaced a year earlier, after the Times reported that ABC was considering the possibility of replacing its beloved Nightline and Ted Koppel with late-night comedy host David Letterman.
“CBS Wants 60 Minutes Chief to Hand Over Stopwatch,” read the headline of the Rutenberg piece, which ran across the top of the business section the next Monday, right before Thanksgiving. Not exactly the story Hewitt had counted on, it portrayed Hewitt as a difficult manager who “sometimes has trouble hearing in the screening room” and was not yet willing to consider an orderly transition to a new team. It quoted correspondent Ed Bradley as advocating more flexibility from Hewitt: “Whoever the successor to Don is,” Bradley told the Times, “maybe Don could walk with him part of the way. . . . I’d like to see Don welcome somebody. Is that going to happen? I don’t know, that’s up to Don.”
While the story went to some length to note Hewitt’s considerable achievements, its ambivalent tone ended up leaving both sides unhappy. CBS in particular wasn’t pleased with the chart on the front page of the Times business section that illustrated the steady decline of the show’s ratings in recent years. Josh Howard told colleagues he was annoyed that Heyward hadn’t given any quotes at all in support of 60 Minutes, let alone Hewitt. It’s likely that those complaints led to Betsy West’s letter to the editor published in the Times a few days later, filled with praise of 60 Minutes and, specifically, its coverage of the World Trade Center attacks.
Hewitt professed to be happy with the piece, but, ever mindful of the importance of spin, realized he needed to provoke a second burst of media interest to keep his campaign afloat. He arranged to go on Larry King Live for the full hour on the night of December 2, 2002. Hewitt had been on Larry King’s show before, of course; all the 60 Minutes correspondents gathered, with Hewitt, for a 1998 appearance in connection with the show’s thirtieth anniversary. And from time to time, correspondents appeared individually as guests, as did Andy Rooney. But this would mark the first time Hewitt by himself had ever commanded the entire hour.
King launched the interview (on a split screen from Los Angeles) by reading a quote from the Times story:
KING: “Mr. Hewitt likes to say that he would die at his desk before relinquishing his position,
and that he really means it. But CBS executives are insisting that he prepare to step aside, seeking to put new zest on the venerable program. They want to replace him most probably with the 47-year-old Jeffrey Fager, a former Hewitt protégé and the producer of 60 Minutes II.”
Mr. Hewitt, the stage is yours. What about this?
HEWITT: Well, I still intend to die at my desk. I never said where that was. I would like it to be at CBS.
Later in the interview he told King that he’d “already had two job offers.” One of them, it was suggested later, was an offer from Fox News executive Roger Ailes, for the 7:00 P.M. Sunday night time slot on Fox. The nature of the second offer was never made clear.
HEWITT: I think the problem is that they don’t know that I’m not the ordinary, run-of-the-mill, everyday 80-year-old. . . .
KING: Knowing you, you must have picked up a phone when the story ran and called the powers that be and said, “What’s the story?”
HEWITT: Well, I know what the story is, but I have a feeling that whatever they’ve sort of decreed, I think they’re having some second thoughts. I mean, that may be wishful thinking and I may find out tomorrow morning that I was kidding myself, but I got a feeling that—I can’t believe Mel Karmazin and Leslie Moonves are going to run a network based on not how good you are, but how old you are.
Hewitt then launched into his standard defense of the show, citing ratings, demographics, and his endlessly repeated hunch that the emphasis of advertisers on the 18–49 age group is the result of “a bunch of kids in advertising agencies getting even with their parents” for not letting them watch TV on a school night.
As King pressed him on his reaction to the New York Times piece, Hewitt implied that the story was planted by CBS News—and revived the J. Max Robins TV Guide piece as evidence that someone in the news division was out to make him look bad. As for the Times report that his hearing has suffered, Hewitt declared testily, “That’s absolutely untrue.”
Even King’s callers seemed fascinated by the succession issue, with questions like this one from a viewer in Birmingham, Michigan.
CALLER: Mr. Hewitt, with all due respect to your fabulous career—hello?
HEWITT: Anything that starts with all due respect, look out.
CALLER: O.K. With all due respect to your fabulous career, don’t you think it’s time for you, Morley Safer, Mike Wallace, and Ed Bradley to step aside and let a younger group come in and take over where you left off in such great grace?
HEWITT: Why do you want a younger group to take over? Are you dissatisfied with what you see on 60 Minutes?
CALLER: A little bit.
HEWITT: Well, I’m sorry to hear that.
KING: How about the old adage, which is what she’s calling about, hey, sometimes it’s time to move aside?
HEWITT: Yeah. And what, and let them do to you what the network did to Ted Turner? I mean, it wasn’t time for Ted Turner to move aside, but somebody decided that maybe they ought to move him out of here. That guy was as close to being a broadcasting genius as there ever was and he’s not around anymore.
No, I think the part—why doesn’t somebody start a younger 60 Minutes? Go ahead. Take a 60 Minutes and find a whole bunch of young guys and program it for younger people.
KING: Is that what 60 Minutes II is?
HEWITT: No, 60 Minutes II is a carbon copy of us. Now, if they are unhappy with the demographics that we reach, why do they make a carbon copy? Why didn’t they do a different show? I don’t understand that.
Andrew Heyward, watching the show, didn’t agree at all with Hewitt’s contention that CBS wanted him out because of his age; he had great respect for Hewitt and the show he’d created. But he just needed to ensure its longevity by lining up a successor. Why couldn’t Hewitt understand that? It was clear to Heyward that Hewitt wanted a battle and would continue to play it out in public in the worst possible way.
But for fun, Heyward was contradicting Hewitt’s answers in his head—imagining what Hewitt would say if he were being completely honest. He was especially amused when King asked Hewitt about his reaction to the New York Times article. King presumed that Hewitt would immediately call his bosses to ask them if the story were true. “But you did not pick up a phone,” King asked Hewitt, sounding incredulous, “and call and say, ‘What’s the story?’ You did not do that?”
Of course he did not do that, Larry, shouted the voice in Heyward’s head, laughing. Because he planted the story himself!
On the night of December 14, 2002, less than two weeks later, Heyward headed downtown for what promised to be the most awkward social event of the season: Don Hewitt’s 80th birthday party.
It had been decided by management that the event should take place in public, not in some private room somewhere; and so several tables had been reserved in a private alcove at Eleven Madison Park, an elegant East Side restaurant with high ceilings, strong drinks, and rich desserts. The guest list included all the correspondents of 60 Minutes, of course, as well as the senior producing staff of the show—Phil Scheffler, Esther Kartiganer, Merri Lieberthal, and Josh Howard. The CBS contingent included not only Heyward and Betsy West but also CBS chairman Leslie Moonves and his boss, Viacom vice chairman Mel Karmazin. Hewitt was seated with the CBS honchos, while the rest of the correspondents were scattered at smaller adjacent tables.
Much time was devoted to a series of gifts and toasts that deflected attention from the acrimony between Hewitt and the network that was paying for his party tonight. Foremost among the gifts was a large pink elephant brought to the restaurant by Betsy West, meant to symbolize the proverbial unseen 800-pound elephant that was filling the cavernous restaurant. West had neatly captured the spirit of the dinner, a boisterous and friendly affair of drinking and toasting and celebration—albeit with an undertone of odd discomfort. A signed 60 Minutes cover from Heyward included the inscription “Let’s celebrate your 85th together”—a statement that could have been construed as wishful thinking in light of Hewitt’s threat on Larry King Live to leave CBS if he was removed from his job at 60 Minutes.
Aside from friendly jokes and knowing winks in the various testimonials to Hewitt that night, the dinner did nothing to resolve the differences between Hewitt and CBS. The next day, Hewitt sent Heyward a thank-you note; in it, Hewitt couldn’t resist an allusion to the very issue he believed was behind Heyward’s desire to remove him from his job: his age.
“It made me feel twenty years younger,” Hewitt wrote, “which means I’m now 60.”
A few weeks later, in early January, Andrew Heyward took Don Hewitt to lunch at Gabriel’s, a neighborhood favorite for CBS honchos, and told him, in amicable but definite terms, that the time had come for him to leave 60 Minutes.
The Larry King Live appearance had failed to galvanize the pro-Hewitt forces the way he had imagined. Hewitt’s rage against CBS management had elicited nothing like the groundswell of support for Koppel in 2002—nothing, in fact, but more resentment. It was clear to everyone, including the correspondents, that the time had come for change. And to most 60 Minutes insiders, the notion of Jeff Fager coming in as their new executive producer was not nearly so dangerous or destructive as Hewitt had tried to make it seem.
A year had passed since Heyward first suggested that Hewitt step aside. Scheffler had eventually agreed to retire a year later, in June 2003: that meant it was time for Hewitt to formally sign a new contract as well, spelling out the precise terms and timetable for his departure. After years of reluctance to do battle with an acknowledged giant of the TV news business, Heyward knew he must now act and accept the consequences, which would no doubt be acrimonious and ugly.
Heyward had made Hewitt a final offer: He could remain at CBS News as a well-paid consultant but only if he agreed to cede total control of 60 Minutes to Fager at the end of the 2003–2004 season. From CBS’s point of view, it was a generous arrangement; having pushed back the Scheffler retirement, the network was also giving Hewitt an extra year t
o make his exit. That extension also benefited CBS, in that it allowed Phil Scheffler’s successor, Josh Howard, a full year as Hewitt’s number two man before his likely appointment to succeed Fager as executive producer of 60 Minutes II.
Unlike all the previous negotiations, however, this one offered no room for equivocation, no possibility for Hewitt to wangle another year at the helm of the show—no more chances to delay the transition to new leadership that CBS had been trying to pull off for years, and now needed to nail down. The days of delicate maneuvering were over.
Predictably, the negotiations turned briefly difficult—at one point, one high-level 60 Minutes insider said he believed Heyward threatened Hewitt with dismissal unless he agreed to CBS’s terms. But before matters reached the breaking point, according to the 60 Minutes insider, Hewitt’s longtime attorney, Ronald S. Konecky, entered the discussions and helped avert a crisis. In a matter of days, the tough postures were set aside; the deal was done. Hewitt would officially leave 60 Minutes in June 2004 and remain at CBS with the title of executive producer, CBS News, for 10 years—at which point he’d be 90. His new contract (including an estimated $1 million annual salary) would retain all the perks of his current job, including health insurance, car service, and a liberal expense account.