What Everyone Is Getting Wrong About the Turmoil at ‘60 Minutes’

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News that CBS anchor Scott Pelley had slammed new “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton—and CBS News boss Bari Weiss—in an all-hands meeting earlier this week landed like, well, a bombshell report from the long-running news show itself. The New York Times described it as an “extraordinary exchange,” with Pelley questioning Bilton’s qualifications and alleging that Weiss was intent on “murdering” ‘60 Minutes’ entirely.

The reaction among the media class was immediate—and almost entirely unified: Pelley was a hero. He was standing up to the attempts by Weiss and Bilton to turn ‘60 Minutes’ and, more broadly, CBS, into an arm of the Trump administration.

Social media was quickly filled with encomiums to Pelley and his “courage.” The narrative was set: Pelley is standing up for capital “J” journalism, which Bilton and Weiss are actively trying to destroy in the name of kissing Donald Trump’s ass. (David Ellison, who owns CBS News and its parent company Paramount, is friendly with President Donald Trump and he has, since having taken over the network, at a minimum, moved aggressively to be less openly confrontational with the president.)

But that rush to crown Pelley is not only misguided, I’d argue—and it totally misses the real point here.

Before I make my case, let me offer a few caveats: I do not know Pelley, Weiss or Bilton. I truly have no rooting interest here. I am also a giant fan of ‘60 Minutes.” My parents watched it every Sunday night when I was a kid. Since I got into journalism, my admiration for what they do has only grown. And yes, ‘60 Minutes’ is, by all accounts, a bright spot in the CBS News universe. Its most recent season averaged more than 9 million viewers—a 9% increase over the previous year. (Though, of course, the question of whether CBS News makes money for the broader network is more complicated.)

Oh, and I am not trying to get a job at CBS either. I love my life as an independent journalist. I just re-signed my contributor deal at NewsNation. If CBS offered me a job tomorrow, I couldn’t—and wouldn’t—take it!

But here’s the thing: I don’t think Pelley is a hero. Nor do I agree with those screaming that any attempt to change ‘60 Minutes’ is proof positive that Bilton or Weiss is trying to “murder” it.

Pelley has every right to voice his dissatisfaction with the decision by Weiss to jettison the show’s former executive producer (as well as a decent chunk of the staff) in order to bring in Bilton and a new regime.

But is an all-hands meeting really the time and place to do it? Especially considering this reporting from CNN’s Brian Stelter, which claims Weiss and Bilton had sought a private meeting with Pelley, and he turned them down.

Seen in the most pro-Pelley light, his choice to confront Bilton and Weiss in an all-hands gathering was a way to make his point as big and brightly as possible. Huddling behind closed doors with the bosses wouldn’t properly convey his upset over the restructuring.

But what if Pelley chose to do his “truth to power” thing not in hopes of actually changing anything but rather as a way to make it as performative as possible—in a content age in which performative emotion is absolute gold? I mean, you can’t blast both your immediate boss and your big boss and expect to keep your job. And I would assume Pelley knew that going in!

The immediate leak of the audio of Pelley’s remarks to seemingly every media reporter suggests to me that this latter—and admittedly more cynical—explanation has real plausibility.

Then there’s the core of Pelley’s criticism of Bilton and Weiss: That they don’t have sufficient “broadcast news” experience to do the job well/right.

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There is no doubt that neither Weiss nor Bilton has the sort of resume that people who have traditionally held these roles at networks have possessed. They haven’t spent their lives in the world of TV production. And, at times, that’s shown—like when CBS News didn’t get its evening news anchor, Tony Doukopil, a visa to get into China to cover Trump’s visit there.

But there is also no doubt that broadcast news—and cable TV news—is a dying product. The average age of a CBS News viewer is 62! NBC News is 57. ABC News is a “youthful” 55.

That’s a problem. Because unless science figures out a way to get us all to live until we are 150, the reality is that the main clientele for what CBS News is offering—yes, including ‘60 Minutes’ — is, quite literally, dying off.

Which is why I found myself vigorously nodding my head to the defense Bilton offered on Monday amid the Pelley barrage: “Broadcast is an ice cube that is melting.”

No one—presumably not even Pelley—thinks that the solution to what ails big media is more of the same. Yes, ‘60 Minutes’ still works! But for how long? Doesn’t it make sense to look at your flagship products and ask, “How are we going to make this product continue to work amid massive disruption in how people want to consume content?”

To me, the answer is very obvious. Which is why Pelley’s criticism rings false.

If I was Ellison—or anyone who owns a legacy media brand—I would want people in the decision-making room who aren’t old hands. No amount of expertise in how to make great-looking broadcast TV shows or put together a whiz-bang front page of the print newspaper is going to reverse the steep decline of people who consume their content that way.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that you throw the baby out with the bathwater. CBS News still needs to make broadcast TV! You can’t get rid of everyone who is an expert in that space.

But, again, the fact that neither Weiss nor Bilton has experience in making TV seems to me more an asset than a detriment. CBS News (and every other legacy outlet) has to figure out new ways to reach people on new platforms. Why not have people—like Weiss!—who has done that?

The changes in how people consume content and the sort of content they want to consume is fundamental. It’s never going back to the way it was.

That sort of massive change requires a re-examination of how we do everything.

My personal writing hero, Stephen King, said it best in his amazing book “On Writing”: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”

We’ve reached the “kill your darlings” stage of legacy media. Now the only question is what we do about it. And doing the same old things—or slight variations on the same old things—ain’t going to work.