When Don Hewitt was offered his first job in television, he asked: ”Do you mean watching little pictures in a box?” That was in 1948, and, well over half a century later, Hewitt, who has died aged 86, leaves as his monumental legacy the single most successful and most widely imitated programme on the medium: the American news magazine show 60 Minutes.
Its signature ticking stopwatch first appeared on CBS in New York on September 24 1968. During its run, which continues today, it has scored a record 23 consecutive seasons in the United States’s top 10 (1977-2000) and was the only show to be at No 1 in three consecutive decades. It earned its network huge profits and was syndicated and copied around the world, as well as in the US and inside CBS, which in 1999 launched a spin-off show, 60 Minutes II.
Hewitt’s inspiration was that, instead of confinement to one-topic documentaries, television could screen an hour-long show with three main segments, each dominated by a single reporter or, in the term he coined, an ”anchor”. Subjects could range, as he put it, from a ”look inside Marilyn Monroe’s closet to a look inside Robert Oppenheimer’s [nuclear] laboratory”, with some form of commentary to close the programme. It would be like Time magazine on the screen.
He also injected powerfully driven narratives into the topics under the rubric of what he called the universal human request to ”Tell me a story” — the title of his 2001 autobiography. The final touch was a strong moral thread, so the show became what a colleague called ”America’s ombudsman”.
Over the decades Hewitt added more reporters — though to his shame, not a woman until 1984 — and all became stars. They also became rather old, so that when he reluctantly retired in June 2004, the octogenarian Hewitt was actually younger than two colleagues on the show, and the reporter Morley Safer was nearly 75. Even then, Hewitt only relinquished daily control over 60 Minutes, and had a contract as a CBS consultant that expired in 2013.
As he grew up with television, Hewitt was part of its early development, refining the evening news programme from 1950 to 1962 and then, for two more years, with the revered anchor Walter Kronkite. He directed the first political debate between John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960, when he advised the latter to wear make-up to conceal his wan appearance. Nixon famously declined and was widely regarded as having lost the debate, although those who heard it on radio thought he had won. (Hewitt later came to dislike intensely the power of television over elections.)
He produced TV coverage of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953 and the installation of Pope John XXIII in 1958. From 1948 to 1980 he supervised CBS reports of the annual political conventions of both main parties. These were relatively easy compared with an hour-long show he directed about Frank Sinatra in 1965, when the singer claimed they had an agreement not to mention his alleged mafia links. When Kronkite broached the forbidden subject, Sinatra exploded, while Hewitt denied any promise.
The following dialogue ensued: Sinatra: ”I ought to kill you.” Hewitt: ”With anyone else, that’s a figure of speech, but you probably mean it.” Sinatra: ”I mean it.” Hewitt: ”If I have a choice, I’d rather you didn’t.” Then he fled to his hotel and Sinatra never spoke to him again.
An intense and combative man, Hewitt often tangled acrimoniously with his staff, but most forgave him because they regarded him as a television genius. Perhaps because of this, in later life he came to regard himself in grandiose terms.
When Bill Clinton, as presidential candidate, entangled in the Gennifer Flowers adultery scandal in the first primary of 1992, appeared to be sinking, he and Hillary Clinton sought out 60 Minutes as the platform from which to rescue his reputation. Hewitt told Clinton: ”The last time I did this it produced a president, Kennedy. This will produce a president, too.” He then edited the interview heavily in Clinton’s favour, but his portrayal of Hillary as adoring wife infuriated her, and to Hewitt’s surprise, he was unwelcome at the White House.
Hewitt was raised by middle-class Jewish parents in a small town in New York state and, after a year at university, entered journalism the old-fashioned way, as copy boy at the New York Herald Tribune. During World War II he was a correspondent for Stars and Stripes, and returned to various print journalism jobs until offered the CBS post — at $20 a week less. He later recalled his acceptance as ”just dumb luck”. It was television’s good fortune.
He is survived by his third wife Marilyn Berger, and two sons and two daughters by his second wife. — guardian.co.uk