Transcript
Don Hewitt
April 21, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Don Hewitt is a 78 year old college dropout who made good; so good in fact that he's been able to produce the nation's first and arguably best TV news magazine for all of 33 years with the same people and the same freedom and the same Sunday time slot. As the media business convulses and converges all around him, Don Hewitt and 60 Minutes endure. He's just written a memoir of his life and 60 Minutes called Tell Me a Story. Mr. Hewitt, after you've exposed hundreds of case of government malfeasance, dozens if not hundreds of cases of falsely accused convicts, hundreds of cases of illegal and unethical business practices, why does anyone sit down for a 60 Minutes interview any more?
DON HEWITT: Ah ha! Morley Safer and I were once in Philadelphia speaking at some meeting, and one of the questions from the audience was your question. Why does a guy who is obviously a crook decide to go on 60 Minutes? And Morley said because a crook doesn't believe he's made it as a crook until he's been on 60 Minutes. [LAUGHTER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You use the tightest closeups on television.
DON HEWITT: No more.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: No more?
DON HEWITT:No. I -- it getting to be a cliche, and I don't like, I don't like cliches, and I think - I think in fact just the other day I told the guys pull back a little - we're working too big. We did the Moroccan Princess who was held as a prisoner by the King of Morocco -- great story -- but I thought we shot it too tight. Her face was bleeding out of the screen. No, we gotta stop that.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You got lots of pores on 60 Minutes on any given evening. [LAUGHS] [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
DON HEWITT: Yeah! Sure. Yeah. No question about it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Right at the beginning of your book you lay out your political positions on everything from race relations to same sex marriage to gun control to God not to mention your entire voting record over the last three decades. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
DON HEWITT: Yeah! Right.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now I applaud that, and I think it's really interesting because your colleague Dan Rather recently got into some hot water by appearing, accidentally, he said, at a Democratic fundraiser. Now one ethicist we spoke to about that situation says it hurts press credibility to reveal your political stripes. I take it you don't agree!
DON HEWITT: No! I'm, I - listen - I'm an open book. Why shouldn't I be as open as the people we go after? But I, I have finally decided that there are two words that I would like to see expunged from the lexicon: it's liberal and conservative. I have no idea what they mean.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You've said that behind every magazine show is a failed sit-com.
DON HEWITT: With one exception.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mm-hm?
DON HEWITT: Cause we started it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS] That's right!
DON HEWITT: But then the rest of them came along and they-- if those sit-coms hadn't died, there wouldn't have been those magazines.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:And you've also said that there isn't enough news for the number of news magazines. Don, you're the father of the genre. Shouldn't you be more nurturing?
DON HEWITT: I would if they were, if they were using them as news magazines and not as filler!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Summarize what you think is the problem with a lot of the news magazines that followed 60 Minutes.
DON HEWITT: Well it's the same thing that's wrong with most television; they're in a game; it's called Sweeps Week Roulette. My favorite sweeps week was the week that WCBS actually did Dangerous Dry Cleaners. I'm telling you Saturday Night Live couldn't have dreamed up anything funnier than that. [LAUGHTER] And it's all nonsense. And the problem really is you can't really compare us to newspapers. Newspaper publishers are in the newspaper business. Broadcast companies are in the entertainment business, and news is a very small part of what they think about, what they care about, and if a broadcast comes along like 60 Minutes and it makes 'em money like it's going out of style, well then they, they pay attention to you, and you become somebody around there. If you don't, you're filler! When I started 60 Minutes I worked for a marvelous man named Bill Leonard who said to me: make us proud. I don't think anybody in television has said to anyone else in television in the last 30, 40 years make us proud.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Have you made any concession to demographics to try and get a younger audience?
DON HEWITT:No. No. I don't know what the demographics are. I've never seen a demographic breakdown. I've never seen one of those one a-- minute by minute Nielsen things that tells you where it peaks and where it goes up and down. I don't want to look at it. The, the trick in this business is to recognize that there is a line that separates news biz from show biz. And the trick is to walk up to that line and touch it with your toe but don't cross it. If you don't go anywhere near it, you lose your audience. If you walk over it, you lose your soul. So you want to find out where is that line and how do you know where that line is? I don't know how I know where that line is. I just kind of know it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:You, Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Andy Rooney are all in your late 70s and, and beyond. After you all retire, will the legitimate news magazine go with you?
DON HEWITT: Remains to be seen. Chairman--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: I can't believe you said it remains to be seen. You should be ashamed of yourself.
DON HEWITT: You happen to be right. [LAUGHTER] You absolutely [LAUGHS] happen to be right.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Are you like Supreme Court justices -- you have to keep working because who knows who they'll appoint after you're gone?
DON HEWITT: There may be some of that, but mostly it's to feed yourself! I don't want to - I don't want to die in a rowboat! I don't want to die in a canoe!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Don Hewitt, executive producer of 60 Minutes and author of Tell Me a Story, thank you very much.
DON HEWITT: Thank you! This was fun.