Hold the stopwatch!
The new boss at “60 Minutes” believes the venerable newsmagazine ought to be more prevalent in popular culture and the news cycle, rather than merely holding forth in its usual place on Sunday evenings on CBS.
“The show is on the air one day, one night, one hour a week, and to me there is an incredible opportunity to take the show and do a lot of things with it,” says Nick Bilton, who was named executive producer of the CBS News mainstay Thursday in an announcement that has shocked insiders at the news division. Bilton is replacing Tanya Simon, a longtime senior steward of the show and a daughter of one of its former correspondents, Bob Simon. Her deputy, Draggan Mihailovich, was also ousted, along with two of the show’s correspondents, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega.
Bilton is just the fifth executive producer in the newsmagazine’s nearly six-decade history, but he is the first person to lead the show without either extensive experience at CBS News, or a long career already established by working at the show. He says he hopes to “reach a different generation of consumers that don’t tune in to the broadcast channel but still want to experience ’60 Minutes’ in all its forms.”
Bilton won’t be the first to attempt such a feat. Previous producers have tried everything from launching a second weekday edition of the program — “60 Minutes II” aired on Wednesdays, then Fridays from 1999 to 2005 — to a digital version of the series that relied on shorter segments and was built for the quick-hit-video platform Quibi and then the Paramount+ streaming service. Both projects ultimately ran their course.
He has one thing previous producers did not have — a vote of confidence from Bari Weiss, the CBS News Editor in Chief whose zeal for reforming the Paramount Skydance news division has given rise to a growing line of likely unwanted controversies at the once-staid news outlet that has been best known for its historical ties to Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.
Bilton says he met Weiss out in Los Angeles, where he had begun to work on documentaries and movies after stints at The New York Times and Vanity Fair. His access to Hollywood, he says, started as he began to option stories he wrote for the Conde Nast magazine for film projects. And then he met up with Weiss and the two worked on some documentary projects together, says Bilton. “We really started to understand the way both of our minds worked,” he recalled, with a focus on storytelling and entrepreneurialism and thinking about how projects might play acorss different media platforms.
During one meeting, says Bilton, “she brought up the idea of me potentially coming on to run ’60′” but his first reaction was why give up on the movies and TV work. Ultimately, says Bilton, “I could not get ’60’ out of my head.”
He will find that many other people cannot, either. “60 Minutes” has been under intense scrutiny for months. The show was turned into a bargaining chip between Paramount’s previous managers and the Trump administration, which leveraged a $16 million settlement to end what has been viewed in many legal circles as a flimsy lawsuit tied to a pre-Election Day interview between Bill Whitaker, a “60 Minutes” correspondent, and former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. Paramount made the deal as it sought to complete its sale to Skydance.
Two senior CBS News executives — Bill Owens, the former executive producer of “60 Minutes,” and Wendy McMahon, the former CEO of CBS News, local stations and syndication — suggested in remarks that they could no longer push back against corporate mandates they felt would weaken the newsroom. Both left CBS News last year.
And there has been skepticism about Weiss’ stewardship of the program. Late last year, she ordered held a story by Alfonsi about migrants being shipped by the U.S. to harsh imprisonment in El Salvador. Weiss did so after “60 Minutes” had already promoted the segment in public circles, calling for Alfonsi to get comment from Trump officials after she had already made efforts to do so. The move drew new inquiry because it had the appearance of trying to placate the Trump administration over a story officials might not find favorable. The segment appeared during a January, 2026, telecast and Weiss acknowledged she drew unwanted attention because she was unfamiliar with some of the news outlet’s processes.
Bilton says he has a pretty stiff spine and can stand up to those who might seek to thwart the show’s newsgathering efforts. Keeping a story going in the face of adversity “is just about my favorite thing to do,” he says. “There is nothing I love more than picking a fight and I did it at The New York Times and I did it at Vanity Fair,” he says, adding: “We need that more than ever now.”
Bilton declined to discuss any potential staffing moves that might take place after Thursday’s reorganization, and also felt he could not reveal any of the plans he suggested to Weiss in their previous conversations because he wanted to have more substantial meeting with “60 Minutes” producers and staff. There’s no reason, he believes, why the program can’t keep trying new things.
In the media sector, says Bilton, “if you don’t disrupt, you yourself will be disrupted.” And with that, it feels like the show’s famous timepiece has started its countdown anew.
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