If I’m to believe the ramblings of some of the more frequent sh-tposters who inexplicably bubble to the top of my social media feeds–especially the “safe havens” of Threads and Bluesky–tonight is the beginning of yet another dagger in the rapidly flailing body of CBS NEWS’ Tiffany history. 60 MINUTES begins its 59th season tonight, which thanks to the way the NFL schedule breaks will mean for me a straight-up start time of 7 PM. For the eighty per cent of the country that falls in the E/CST zones that do not house a mediocre football team with home rights precedence the new era will begin a couple of high-rated commercial breaks after the Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings conclude their season-opening football game. For the football-passive, that’s a very decent but hardly headline-inducing matchup of two teams without significant national fan bases. And for those in New York City, they’ll be stuck with the epic reunion of the Geno Smith-led Jets and their former coach Robert Saleh, now of the Tennessee Titans.
Snarking aside, it’ll be a much more significant lead-in than a non-doubleheader or out-of-season week will provide–a point I attempted to drive home in what turned out to be one of last year’s most viewed musings. And don’t think the fact the season premiere isn’t happening closer to CBS premiere week–yeah, they still have one and the balance of their prime time isn’t launching until the second week of October–isn’t directly due to this fact.
What is also means is that you’re gonna have to make an effort to actually wind up watching or not–whether that means those hell-bent on perpetually supporting the martyrs like Scott Pelley by actively turning off CBS at game’s end or those morbidly curious enough to see exactly how much the new regime will screw up their beloved legacy. It’s a big enough deal that USA TODAY’s Kelly Lawler devoted an entire piece to it late last week:
Get ready for “60 Minutes” of change this Sunday…the venerated newsmagazine program returns for its 59th season Sept. 13 (7:30 p.m. ET/PT) and it won’t look or feel exactly the same it has for the past 58 years, whether that’s the faces of the newscasters, the graphic design, the format, or, potentially, the stories being covered.
That’s because the legacy news program is under a mandate for updates and change under the new directorship of executive producer Nick Bilton. This new management has culled the ranks of many longtime “60 Minutes” employees, hired new correspondents and producers and instituted other updates.
All the controversy-causing alterations at “60 Minutes” and other CBS News programs have come after conservative-leaning journalist Bari Weiss was hired as Editor-in-Chief of all of CBS News, including TV shows on the network and online media operation. CBS’s parent company Paramount merged with Skydance in 2025, and new CEO David Ellison, son of Oracle CEO, billionaire and prominent Trump supporter Larry Ellison, installed Weiss as part of broader changes at the company.
Well, we’ve already established that the start time needs an asterisk, so if what Lawler reported was culled from CBS’ press release that’s sign number one that the standards of the Don Hewitt and even the Wendy McMahon eras have diminished. But for those who are anticipating a tsunami of other disruptions up front, maybe temper your doomsday expectations a tad. THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’s Alex Weprin provided a detailed preview of what’s on tap tonight for those dreading the absolute worst:
The 59th season premiere of 60 Minutes will dedicate a segment to Donald Trump’s controversial use of the presidential pardon.
The segment is the third and final segment to be revealed from the premiere episode, following Jon Wertheim’s profile of the Los Angeles Rams and coach Sean McVay, and Norah O’Donnell’s exclusive interview with the U.S. pilot who was shot down and rescued in Iran.
But it is Lesley Stahl’s segment, “The Pardon Economy,” that may end up raising the most eyebrows. “Presidents have pardoned criminals since the time of George Washington. It’s a constitutional power that has been controversial from the start – but perhaps never more so than during the Trump presidency,” the description states. “Lesley Stahl and 60 Minutes investigate the world of lawyers and lobbyists who have created a new pardon economy. Shachar Bar-On and Michael Kaplan are the producers.”
All of the featured reporters are 60 MINUTES veterans, the 84-year-old Stahl now the dean of them all. Funny, no profile of any cabinet member, let alone Fat Orange Jesus himself. You’d think in the wake of the massively attended and highly rated midterm convention this past week the syncophants with the keys to this kingdom would have insisted upon it.
Look, I get that’s it’s somehow seen as one’s commitment to decency and fairness to pray that Weiss and Bilton bring their reverse Midas touch to this franchise that they’ve already brought to the network’s respective morning and evening news franchises. Making O’Donnell the face of all of them appears to be as much compromise than revolutionary–and based on her recent track record it seems like they are merely shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. Pat McAfee she ain’t.
For me, my choice has already been made. As I tend to this time of year, I’m choosing Sunday Night Football as soon as I return from a Rosh Hashonah ritual called Tashlich, which involves throwing stale bread into the ocean as a representation of casting away one’s sins from the previous year. Among those will be caring at all about what happens to Bari Weiss and her minions one way or the other. It’s out of all our hands now save for those pushing buttons in the Nielsen sample or in the executive wing of the soon-to-be-sold CBS Broadcast Center.