Bring a stopwatch!
The new boss of “60 Minutes” believes the venerable newsmagazine should not only remain in its usual spot on CBS Sunday evenings, but should become more prevalent in popular culture and the news cycle.
“This show is on the air one day, one night, one hour a week. For me, it’s a great opportunity to take it and do different things with it,” says Nick Bilton, who was named executive producer of CBS News’ flagship show in an announcement Thursday that shocked news department insiders. Bilton will succeed Tanya Simon, the program’s longtime senior manager and daughter of one of its former correspondents, Bob Simon. Her deputy, Dragan Mihailovic, was also expelled, along with two of the program’s correspondents, Sharin Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega.
Mr. Bilton is only the fifth executive producer in the newsmagazine’s nearly 60-year history, but he is the first to lead the show without having either extensive experience at CBS News or a long established career working on the show. “We want to reach a different generation of consumers who don’t tune in to broadcast channels, but who want to experience 60 Minutes in all its forms,” he said.
Bilton is not the first to attempt such a feat. Previous producers have tried everything from launching a second weekday edition of the show, “60 Minutes II,” which aired on Wednesdays and then Fridays from 1999 to 2005, to the instant hit video platform Quibi, which relied on short segments, to launching a digital version of the series built for the Paramount+ streaming service. Both projects ultimately went well.
He has one thing that no other producer has ever had. A vote of confidence from CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss. The CBS News editor-in-chief, who was eager to reform the Paramount Skydance news department, is increasingly likely to be stirring up unwanted controversy at a once-solid news organization best known for its historic ties to Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.
Mr. Bilton said he met Mr. Weiss in Los Angeles after working for the New York Times and Vanity Fair, where he began working on documentaries and films. He says his access to Hollywood came when Condé Nast magazine began optioning a novel he wrote for a film project. Then he met Weiss and the two worked on several documentary projects together, Bilton says. “We really started to understand how each other’s psyches worked,” he recalls, focusing on storytelling and entrepreneurship and thinking about how the project would work across different media platforms.
Bilton said that during one meeting, “she brought up the idea that I might be on stage for ’60.’ But his first reaction was why give up film and television work? In the end, Bilton says, “I just couldn’t get the word ’60’ out of my head.”
He will find that many others cannot as well. “60 Minutes” has been under intense scrutiny for months. The show became a bargaining chip between Paramount’s former executives and the Trump administration, which used a $16 million settlement to end what many legal circles considered a flimsy lawsuit related to a pre-Voting Day interview between “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker and former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. Paramount has entered into a deal to finalize the sale to Skydance.
Two senior executives at CBS News, Bill Owens (former “60 Minutes” executive producer) and Wendy McMahon (former CEO of CBS News, local stations and syndication), suggested in their statements that they could no longer resist corporate mandates that they believed would weaken the newsroom. Both left CBS News last year.
And there is some skepticism about Weiss’ responsibility to manage the program. Late last year, she ordered Mr. Alfonsi’s story about immigrants being sent to harsh imprisonment in El Salvador by the United States to be withheld. Weiss did this after “60 Minutes” had already publicly promoted the segment and after Alfonsi had already made efforts to get comment from Trump officials. The move invited new scrutiny as it appeared to be an attempt to appease the Trump administration over a story officials may not like. The segment appeared during a January 2026 telecast, with Weiss admitting that his unfamiliarity with some of the news organization’s processes led to unwanted attention.
Bilton says he has a strong back and is able to stand up to those who try to interfere with the show’s coverage. Continuing the story in the face of adversity is “exactly what I love to do,” he says. “There’s nothing I love more than picking a fight, and I’ve done it for The New York Times and Vanity Fair,” he said, adding, “Right now, we need a fight more than ever.”
Mr. Bilton declined to discuss any staffing changes that may occur after Thursday’s reorganization, and because he wanted to have a more substantial meeting with “60 Minutes” producers and staff, he felt unable to reveal plans he proposed to Mr. Weiss in earlier conversations. He believes there’s no reason the program can’t continue to try new things.
In the media field, “if you don’t disrupt, you’re going to disrupt yourself,” Bilton says. With that, it feels like the show’s famous clock has begun a new countdown.
