Nick Bilton suggests 60 Minutes might get "kind of gonzo" with its journalism

This is per remarks Bilton gave to The Hollywood Reporter, wherein he detailed his “vision” for the venerated news program. “Once a week for one hour, one evening, you have this incredible show, which is usually three small, short documentaries, and to me it’s crazy that that’s where it ends,” he told THR. (That’s not where it ends—there is already extra content on the CBS News website, and in 2021, Paramount+ streamed 60 Minutes+, which was aimed at a younger audience. It was canceled after one season.) “I think that there is an opportunity to bring it to so many different platforms and to bring it to so many different people via those platforms by expanding the way we tell stories, and it’s still 60 Minutes,” Bilton continues.”[L]inear television is very much the audience coming to find you, and I think that there’s an opportunity to go and find the audience in a multitude of different mediums.” 

“I think there are a lot of parts of 60 that are fantastic and work really well, and I think there are other parts of it that can be brought into the modern era,” Bilton says elsewhere in the article. It’s difficult to imagine how CBS News can accomplish this without dismantling the rigor that made 60 Minutes such a respected program. As THR points out, news programming rarely drives subscriptions to streaming services. (Nevermind that 60 Minutes has been a top-performing show in the Nielsen rating—news or otherwise—for decades.) Perhaps with time, Bilton will prove himself ready for this challenge, though staffers are less certain. As one employee told Status after Bilton was announced, “It’s over. I don’t see how 60 will be able to function after this.”