Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen answers reader questions every Wednesday at TribLive.com in a column that also appears in the Saturday Tribune-Review.
Q: With more than half of the “60 Minutes” correspondents fired or otherwise departed, what stories are they going to replay this summer?
— Mark, Squirrel Hill
Rob: I expect “60 Minutes” will still air reruns of stories reported by some or all of the departed correspondents. Management may not love giving these personalities additional airtime, but they really have no other choice, although I suppose CBS could pre-empt the show with greater frequency, too.
The larger issue is what will air on “60 Minutes,” TV’s highest-rated news program, when its new season begins on Sept. 13? And who will report those stories? Sure, the three remaining correspondents — Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, Jon Wertheim — have opted to stay on for now, after a stern rebuke to new management, but that’s not enough bodies to keep the weekly show going. And under current management, would a serious journalist even want to take a job at the chaotic, now diminished “60 Minutes?” A once prestigious gig has been badly tarnished.
Regardless of whether you agree with his tone or management’s position that asking tough questions — the job of a “60 Minutes” correspondent — is tantamount to insubordination, Scott Pelley was 100% accurate in many of his assertions when he spoke truth to power on June 1.
Pelley challenged new “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton, saying Bilton possessed slender qualifications for the position. Accurate! Bilton is a former tech journalist who most recently was writing Hollywood screenplays with no background in traditional broadcast news. “60 Minutes” is nothing if not traditional, and while it could stand to get some reinvention for the digital age, the show already has a strong online presence (4.1 million YouTube subscribers; 2.5 billion video views on social media, doubling its viewership in the past year) and this burn-it-all-down approach by management surely isn’t going to advance any modernization goals.
Pelley claimed that Pittsburgh native Bari Weiss was unqualified to lead CBS News as its editor-in-chief. Accurate! Weiss was an opinion journalist for The New York Times before launching her anti-woke website, The Free Press. Like Bilton, she also has no background in broadcast journalism, and it shows in her many blunders since taking the job. (It’s also wild that Weiss, a self-styled free-speech absolutist, fired Pelley because she … didn’t like what he said or how he said it.)
Pelley blamed Weiss for changes to the “CBS Evening News” that he deemed catastrophic, and asked, “Why should we expect that any of this [at ’60 Minutes’] is going to be any better?” Accurate and excellent question! Ratings for “CBS Evening News” have been in the cellar since Weiss installed Tony Dokoupil as anchor and there’s been one amateurish fiasco after another during his tenure, although, in fairness, several of those blunders can be traced to Weiss, which just reinforces how ill-equipped she is to do the job she’s in.
All of this comes before Pelley’s accusations of editorial interference (“New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” Pelley wrote. “I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified.”).
Regardless of whether changes at CBS News are an effort to curry favor with the Trump administration as CBS owner Paramount-Skydance tries to get government regulatory approval to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, from a broadcast news management standpoint alone, Pelley is largely correct and his new bosses are mostly in the wrong.
Q: I get these KDKA-TV emails every day and at the end of them is always an item about the 2024-2025 season AND an ad for Kroger. Why? It’s 2026 and we don’t have Kroger stores here!
— Ann, Freedom
Rob: Seems like someone is asleep at the switch or not paying attention to outdated, irrelevant ad/promo insertions that are likely automated. Either no one has noticed the error, or no one cares to correct it.
Q: Was this the last season of “Call the Midwife?” The May 10 episode certainly seemed like it was tying up loose ends.
— Carol, via Facebook
Rob: A PBS publicist had no information to share but did point to an interview with the “Call the Midwife” showrunner who said a 16th season had been ordered but it may be a few years before they get around to writing and filming it due to other commitments, including:
• A “Call the Midwife” film, set in 1972, shoots this year for release in 2027.
• A spin-off series, “Sisters in Arms,” set during World War II and featuring younger versions of the show’s characters, is in the works. (There will not be a “Call the Midwife” Christmas special in 2026.)
“I don’t think it’s the last series in the classic form,” writer Heidi Thomas said of the ongoing, original series in an interview with Yours. “But we are going to take a break from it for a couple of years. … [Season] 16 will have a slightly different setting because of changes in [England’s National Health Service]. It’ll still be in the East End of London, but possibly something like a small community hospital or a GP practice, but that’s something I’ll be working on later this year.”