CBS' 60 Minutes Gets New Executive Producer

CBS News has named Nick Bilton as the new executive producer of “60 Minutes,” replacing Tanya Simon in a leadership shake-up aimed at modernizing the iconic newsmagazine

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Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss announced the move Thursday, saying it was time for “a new approach and a new chapter.” Bilton, a longtime technology journalist, documentarian and former New York Times columnist with no prior traditional broadcast experience, was chosen to lead the program.Simon, who had held the top job for about a year after three decades at the show, is departing. 

The change caps a period of turmoil for “60 Minutes,” which premiered in 1968 and is famous for its ticking stopwatch opening.

In a memo to staff, Weiss and CBS News President Tom Cibrowski said the goal is “building a show that thrives in the 21st century.”

Nick Bilton

“That requires a new approach,” they wrote, “expanding ‘60 Minutes’ beyond a one-hour television broadcast, deepening its role across CBS News, and holding everything we produce to the ambition, fairness, and fearlessness that have defined ‘60 Minutes’ at its best.”

Bilton is expected to meet with staff on Friday.

The executives described Bilton as someone who “embodies the energy and ambition that animated the founders of the show. We cannot imagine a better fit.”

In his own memo, Bilton called “60 Minutes” “without exaggeration, the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced.” He pledged to preserve its cultural significance while adapting to a changed media landscape.

“The world we are reporting on, and the world we are reporting to, where people consume their news, has moved,” Bilton wrote. “And if we don’t move with it, in the ways that matter, we won’t be here for the next sixty years.”