E-mail a friendDon Hewitt Tribute
airdate August 19, 2009
Award-winning producer Don Hewitt is credited with creating the news magazine format. His groundbreaking 60 Minutes program is the most-watched news broadcast in TV history. Hewitt began his career in print journalism and started with CBS as an associate director. In his 50+ years with the net, he pioneered work in producing and directing broadcasts of the world's major news events, including the first televised presidential debate. Hewitt's accomplishments earned him a place in the Television Academy Hall of Fame.
Tavis pays tribute to the creator of 60 Minutes. (9:15)
Don Hewitt Tribute
Tavis: Few people have had the kind of impact on this medium of television the way Don Hewitt did. As the creator of "60 Minutes" he would change the face of the news business, providing a prime time platform for one of TV's longest-running and most successful shows.
But prior to that, he helped change the face of American politics as the producer of the first-ever televised debate in 1960 between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy.
In his most recent appearance on this program, I began by asking Don Hewitt if debates today mean as much as they did back then.
[Begin video clip of Don Hewitt interview.]
Don Hewitt: Nothing matters as much as the first one. The first one was a blockbuster. When the first one was over, Jack Kennedy was president of the United States. They didn't have to wait for Election Day. Nothing like that has happened since.
My most vivid recollection of that first debate is the politicians looking at us and saying to themselves, "That's the only way to run for office," and we - us, looking at them, saying, "That's a bottomless pit of advertising dollars." (Laughter)
That changed politics in America. It reinforced the idea that the only way to campaign and make a splash is on television. In local races you have to buy the time, and it's gone crazy. The amount of money it costs to hold office in the United States or even run for office in the United States, based on the fact that it has to be on television, is obscene.
Tavis: So are you happy with what you have bequeathed my generation, or do you owe us an apology?
Hewitt: (Laughs) I owe you a very big apology. I think that the amount of money - and it's all touched off by that night - the amount of money that goes into television campaigning is obscene.
Tavis: Take me back to 1960 - and I've had the pleasure of talking to you about this before and I know you've been asked about it a thousand and one times - take me back to that debate and tell me, since that was the first one that was televised, what made the difference that night?
Hewitt: Jack Kennedy's persona. Nixon walked in, he banged his knee on the car coming in and he had a staphylococcus infection. He wasn't well; he'd been campaigning all day. Jack Kennedy had been studying up all day. Jack Kennedy walked in; he looked like a Harvard undergrad. No one had ever seen a president like that - he was a matinee idol. He was perfectly tailored, he was tan, he was thin, he was self-assured. It was almost over before it began.
Tavis: Let me ask whether or not you ever could have imagined back in 1960 when you did the first one that these things would have devolved to this point? And I ask that because to your earlier point, you guys had, if not stumbled onto something, certainly had created something that was revolutionary in 1960. Could you ever have imagined that it would devolve to this point that it is today, as you see it, at least?
Hewitt: No. I wish they'd kept it on the idea of a debate, and I think it was a brilliant idea. It was from the brain of Newt Minnow, who became chairman of the FCC under Jack Kennedy. It was his idea, and Frank Stanton, who was then president of CBS. It got into - the number one issue was Nixon's make-up, which is ridiculous. We're picking a president of the United States and the issue is Nixon's make-up.
There've been so many extraneous issues, like being asked "I knew Jack Kennedy and you're no Jack Kennedy," the insults, Ronald Reagan saying to Jimmy Carter, "There you go again." I thought there was a lack of dignity, and they became kind of television shows.
Tavis: You know what's ironic to me, Don Hewitt, as we sit and have this conversation and I listen to you tell me about what it was like to be there and to produce that event in 1960, as I sit and listen to you talk about it, one thing occurs to me - that what came out of that debate, by your own admission, was a great deal of conversation about symbolism, about Nixon not wearing make-up and how bad he looked and sweating profusely, how tanned and handsome and matinee-idolish Jack Kennedy looked.
It was about style over substance then, and here we are in 2008 and we're still getting the same kind of conversation about the fact that Obama was cooler, that he looked better, he looked more presidential - again, more conversation about style. Is that ironic? Do you see the same thing I see?
Hewitt: No, I agree with you 100 percent.
[End video clip of Don Hewitt interview.]
Tavis: I also spoke to Don Hewitt about the legacy of "60 Minutes" and how the program changed the news business and the business of news.
[Begin video clip of Don Hewitt interview.]
Tavis: Since you mentioned advertising, let me cut in right quick and ask you how advertising or the impetus, the demand, quite frankly, for news to raise more and more advertising dollars for the network, how has that changed news as we know it?
Hewitt: Well, in a crazy way I think I did that. I think we - I, in particular, are responsible. I developed a broadcast called "60 Minutes" which took documentaries, took them down to their bare bones, had them broadcast by recognizable faces and voices and names. At that point, the documentaries were sort of - they were like holier-than-thou television. People watched documentaries for the same reason they went to church, because they thought they had to, and it changed television in such a way that "60 Minutes" made a profit of $3.2 million - billion. Start again. (Laughter) We made a profit -
Tavis: That's a big difference, isn't it?
Hewitt: It's a big - $2.2 billion we put in the CBS coffers, and that was unheard of for a news broadcast. So from that day on they assumed that the obligation - it all started when the only way you could get a license to broadcast was to do public service, and the Bill Paleys and the David Sarnoffs and the Leonard Goldensons came to the conclusion that if they ran a news division they would be discharging their public service.
And they never thought of it as anything other than the way they got licenses to broadcast, and after I came along, God help us, where they made money, they decided all the news shows had to make money to stay on the air. And I'm not sure that the day is not coming when all of news is going to go over to all-news stations.
I know for a fact that CBS was talking about buying CNN and I would think if they had they would have moved all the news over there. I don't know if they really like being in the news business.
Tavis: Wow. Let me ask you, since you were such an innovator back in the day, how it is that we get young people, no matter whether or not we get to that point where all the news gets, for lack of a better phrase, downloaded onto cable, to your point.
No matter what the solution is long term, how do we get young people to watch, to care about news? CBS, your network, is trying to figure out now what they're going to do post-Dan Rather. There's talk they're trying to reach out to a younger audience. Any ideas on how that might work successfully?
Hewitt: Sure, sure, but they - somehow, they resist it. I think the way to reach a younger audience is to have five very good columnists - one Monday, one Tuesday, one Wednesday, one Thursday, one Friday. Suppose you did a two-minute column at the end of the news and Jon Stewart did one and Ellen DeGeneres did one and Chris Buckley did one, and then on Friday night I'd get the editor of some college newspaper to do one. That's how you're going to bring-
Tavis: I accept, I accept, I accept.
Hewitt: You got it.
Tavis: Okay. (Laughs)
[End video clip of Don Hewitt interview.]
Tavis: Even well into his eighties Don Hewitt was still thinking of innovative ideas, and perhaps nothing speaks more to his legacy than this - last Sunday night, more than 40 years after its debut, the single most watched program on all of television - "60 Minutes."
Don Hewitt passed away today at the age of 86 following complications from pancreatic cancer, but the shadow of his legacy will extend for generations to come.
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