What the Former “60 Minutes” Boss Told PEOPLE About Pressure to Change the Historic Broadcast Before Bari Weiss' Takeover (Exclusive)

Kyler Alvord, Brooke MigdonSun, June 7, 2026 at 8:52 PM UTC

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Former '60 Minutes' executive producer Bill Owens; CBS News editor-in-chief Bari WeissCredit: Getty(2) -

Former 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens recently denounced the dramatic firings of his former colleagues, claiming they were ousted "by people who don't even know what we do"

CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss fired several members of the show's senior staff after its 58th season concluded in May and brought in Nick Bilton, a tech journalist who has never worked in broadcast news, to lead the long-running Sunday news program

Owens, who left 60 Minutes in protest last year before Paramount completed its merger with Skydance Media, previously told PEOPLE about his confidence in the show's longevity so long as the newsmagazine stayed true to its original mission

When 60 Minutes' Bill Owens opened his newsroom to PEOPLE one day in 2022 to offer a behind-the-scenes look at the making of their milestone 55th season, he didn't express a doubt in the world that the storied newsmagazine would continue to defeat the odds as a key source of hard-hitting news in an increasingly digital media landscape.

Only the third-ever executive producer of the long-running program, Owens shared that the secret to the show's success was in its resistance to conforming. Whereas morning news programs were on the constant hunt to adapt to the viewer and chase trends, 60 Minutes' job was to offer a sort of stubborn consistency, he explained.

"Obviously, we want to maintain our audience, but our main focus is to do our job well and to keep the level that 60 Minutes has always been at, where it should be," Owens said at the time. Their social media strategy adopted the same voice as the broadcast — no "click-bait language," never "talk down to people," "we want to be sophisticated."

"60 Minutes is a place where you're not going to get a partisan take on anything," he added, noting that he frequently told his staff: "We're not aiming at anybody. We're aiming at the entire country."

Then-'60 Minutes' executive producer Bill Owens in 2022Credit: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile for Collision via Getty

Asked about decades-long fears that TV news will crumble in a post-Baby Boomer society without finding a way to modernize, Owens said the average age of a 60 Minutes viewer is in their late 50s — a statistic that hadn't changed since he started at CBS News in 1988 — suggesting that younger generations will "grow into" the show.

"I will not change. I have no interest in changing the content, nor does anybody who works here," he said, firmly. "We're supposed to cover the news and cover it well; tell the stories well. And when you do that with repetition, you build a reputation. And that's what 60 Minutes has done."

Owens followed through on his promise, extending the show's record streak as the most watched news program on television through the 55th, 56th and 57th seasons. Then, while CBS parent company Paramount was finalizing its merger with Skydance Media in the spring of 2025, Owens walked out, alleging that corporate interference had threatened the Sunday news program's journalistic independence. CBS News president Wendy McMahon soon followed.

At the time of Owens' resignation, multimillionaire Shari Redstone — the controlling shareholder of Paramount — had been eagerly trying to secure approval from President Donald Trump's administration to sell the company to Skydance Media, run by Trump-aligned tech scion David Ellison.

That July, less than three months after Owen left, Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Trump over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. The Federal Communications Commission approved the Paramount-Skydance merger just weeks later.

Bari Weiss, a former New York Times opinion columnist, took control of CBS News in October, after Ellison purchased her media startup, The Free Press. She quickly began cleaning house at the legacy news network, and in late May, made the most dramatic changes yet to 60 Minutes when she fired longtime producer Tanya Simon — who had stepped up to fill Owen's shoes — as well as executive editor Draggan Mihailovich and on-air correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega.

Weiss hired Nick Bilton, a tech journalist who has never worked in broadcast news, as 60 Minutes' new executive producer in the aftermath.

The staffing adjustments kicked off a turbulent several days at the newsmagazine, prompting a highly publicized confrontation between Bilton and Scott Pelley, a longtime 60 Minutes correspondent and former CBS Evening News anchor, at a staff meeting on Monday that ultimately resulted in Pelley's firing.

Pelley, 68, told Bilton, 49, in front of colleagues that he had "slender qualifications for this job" and accused Weiss, 42, of "murdering" the program.

On Monday, June 1, in the midst of the latest overhaul, Owens mourned the dismissals of his former colleagues while being honored with the New York Press Club's Gabe Pressman "Truth to Power" award in Manhattan, saying, "They were fired by people who don't even know what we do, who don't actually care," according to Deadline.

"But they did put in a tech columnist as the next executive producer of 60 Minutes, who has never worked in television news and thinks that 60 Minutes can be better," Owens added. "He said that he had a notebook full of ideas. But he wanted to point out to staff that there needed to be a commitment to fairness, in story selection, in the edit room, and in the broadcast." After a pause, the former EP sarcastically added: "Right."

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Also in his award speech, Owens said CBS News and 60 Minutes are "institutions, not places where partisans and ideologues should be employed."

Then-CBS News employees Bill Owens, Wendy McMahon, Cecilia Vega and Scott Pelley at a Paramount event in 2024Credit: Gregg DeGuire/Getty

Bilton, in a letter to staff after Pelley's explosive ousting on Thursday, June 4, acknowledged the past few days had been "trying and difficult." He said he had spoken at length with 60 Minutes' three remaining full-time correspondents, Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim, about "the traditions and legacy of the past," but also about change.

"Discussion, debate and disagreement are essential to the making of good journalism," Bilton wrote. "All will be done in good faith, and always with respect and trust — and with fidelity to the practices that have served us well for 58 years."

In their own message to staff on Friday, June 5, Stahl, Whitaker and Wertheim said they had chosen to stay at 60 Minutes for its upcoming 59th season because "we don't want to see 60 Minutes die." They wrote that they were still "deeply upset" by Weiss' decision to fire the show's senior staff, and by Pelley's ousting.

"As far as we can tell — because no explanation has ever been offered, they were expelled because they fought for our 60 Minutes values and stood up to protect our independence and integrity," they said. "Newsrooms are not supposed to be run like dictatorships."

Back in 2022, before Owens could predict the direction the show would go in his absence, he explained the rigorous research and layered editing process that each story faced under the leadership of himself and his predecessors.

After a correspondent and their own team of producers came up with a story idea, they'd set out for interviews and put together a complete package. Then it was sent to Owens and his right-hand-woman Simon, plus a handful of senior producers, to screen the package and go back and forth with the team on revisions.

"Sometimes if it's fantastic, it's only three [rounds of revisions] before it'll get to air, but sometimes it takes 10 or 12 times," he said. "We really sand down not only the rough edges of maybe the storytelling, but it's really rigorous when it comes to the facts and the objectivity and how we know this and how it's sourced and all of those things."

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Owens commended his top-notch correspondent team — which Stahl described to PEOPLE as a "wholesome family" — for their dedication to reaching the best final product, something Weiss has accused a couple of the same correspondents of resisting since she became involved with the program.

"It's a collaborative place, 60 Minutes. A lot of other broadcasts revolve around one person ... 60 Minutes is an ensemble, and it always has been," Owens said. "Mike Wallace is arguably one of the biggest, greatest, most important journalists ever in TV news, but he was no bigger than Ed Bradley. He was not bigger than Diane Sawyer or Lesley Stahl. And it's the same today."

Correspondents Cecilia Vega, Anderson Cooper, Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley, Bill Whitaker, Jon Wertheim and Sharyn Alfonsi with EP Bill Owens (at desk)Credit: Michele Crowe/CBS News via Getty

Asked at the time whether he was concerned that the quickly changing media environment would lead to a dearth of journalists qualified to pick up the torch of his old-school team — a consideration that's more important now than ever as 60 Minutes approaches its new season with only a fraction of the ensemble it once had — Owens thought for several seconds and said, "I hope not, but I worry."

"Every successful 60 Minutes correspondent has always been able to write, and write well. And tell a story," he said. "You need to have so many tools to be an excellent 60 Minutes producer. You have to be a great interviewer. You have to be fearless and fair."

He continued: "I'm sure there are people out there, and they don't have to be working in network TV. They might be a writer at The Atlantic or the San Francisco Chronicle, or they might be in local TV right now, but they have to care about their writing. They have to kind of suffer over their writing in order for it to really stand out here, because the bar is that high."

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