In the days leading up to the "60 Minutes" season premiere, CBS News projected plenty of confidence. After facing a storm of backlash over the summer for blowing up the acclaimed newsmagazine with a series of high-profile—and still unexplained—firings, the Bari Weiss-led network went on the offensive. New executive producer Nick Bilton participated in an interview with The New York Times previewing the new season. Marketing videos declared "it's time" to see the new "60 Minutes." And billboards in Times Square challenged viewers to "see for yourself" what CBS News had been up to.
Inside the building, as Status previously reported, executives were obsessed with one number: 10.03 million, the number of viewers who had tuned into last season's premiere episode of "60 Minutes." CBS News leaders never outright said it, but the goal, of course, was to best that number—which Weiss & Co. certainly would have loved to do, if only to rub it in the faces of their vocal critics.
Unfortunately for Weiss, that fantasy failed to materialize into a reality. When preliminary ratings data was released Tuesday morning for the Sunday episode, it astonished the industry for all the wrong reasons…
The rest of this story is for paid subscribers only.
Already a subscriber? Sign in.
Scoop-driven reporting and sharp-edged analysis. See why The Wall Street Journal declared Status a “must-read.”
