Who was your favorite anchor/host of the popular CBS news show, 60 Minutes?

I always liked Ed Bradley, but they were all pretty darned good. Kept to a high standard.

Dan Rather, too.

Well, Mike Wallace was the king of hard hitting ambush interviews with scumbags who deserved it, but they were all top notch.

Morley was especially good at character pieces with in depth interviews and Ed Bradley would go to the ends of the earth (literally.) for current breaking news stories.

RIP Morley. You had a long productive life and left us all a little better informed.

Speaking of Mike, does anyone else have fond memories of Martin Short on SNL playing a weasely character (Nathan Therm, I think) trying to evade and justify and sweating madly whilst chain smoking when caught like a bug under a 60 Minutes microscope? Classic.

Heeeeere’s Nathan :
.
.

https://youtu.be/98MNisZJyFI

I like(d) all of them but couldn’t tell you which one specialized in which kind of reporting. Just a general “like” for all and an appreciation for what they do.

One thing I was thinking when I heard Morley died at age 84, after just retiring one week ago, was that you’d never, ever hear of a lady newscaster or correspondent working until age 84. Definitely not with gray hair and wrinkles like these guys. She’d be surgically altered, hair colored, and for 90% of them, out of there by age 60 except for a rare one, like Barbara Walters or Lesley Stahl. I just looked at Lesley Stahl (to confirm she’s over 60), and she’s 74 but she looks like she’s not older than 55. The miracles of surgery…...The average lady newscaster on the news we watch from NYC is about 40 (Darleen Rodriguez) and look at The Today Show ladies – Savannah Guthrie, Tamron Hall. They’re about 35–40 while Matt is in his late 50’s.

@jca

Thar is so true.

Andy Rooney.

Mike Wallace was the honey badger.
Morley Safer was much gentler, and I remember his story on Croquet as being quite whimsical.
Dan Rather, who I like, was too bullyish.
I will go with the late Harry Reasoner. Serious, but soft.

I was never a Dan Rather fan. Too openly biased.

Mike Wallace could just rip them wide open with a smile.
I like Mike!

Barbara Walters is still in the game, @jca, at age 86.
Her personal appearance is her personal choice, but I don’t think people respect her more/less because of it.

Yes, @ibstubro but how many women anchors are around that are over 70? You could probably name 5, tops. Men, many.

True, @jca, but 45 years ago when I was a kid, there were was only one news anchor on my radar: Walter Cronkite.
Chet Huntley, John Chancellor & David Brinkley were variously on “the other channel” at that time. (We didn’t get ABC.)

With the explosion of cable TV, the 24/7 news cycle and the internet women ‘of a certain age’ will continue in the field longer. To name a few, consider:
Katie Couric
Diane Sawyer
Ann Curry
Andrea Mitchell
Elizabeth Vargas
Jane Paley
Joan Lundon
Maria Shriver
Connie Chung
Kelly Lange

@ibstubro I understand your list is incomplete, but don’t forget to mention Linda Ellerbee. Beautiful, smart, sarcastic, and funny. The perfect newscaster!

You’re encouraged to jump in, @filmfann!

I was just trying to point out that 50 years ago there was little opportunity for women in news broadcasting, and yet today the list of prominent women 50+ in news is surprising long. And growing.

Definitely, @ibstubro, but ok, you have ten there. Of that ten, by the time they’re over 70, I can guarantee you not one will look like any of the old 60 Minutes guys with gray hair and wrinkles and hanging chins (or for that matter, any of the other old men correspondents on any news show).

And you think Brian Williams is suddenly going to go to hell, @jca. TV news entered a new age with the 24/7 news cycle, and ‘pretty’ tends to be fairly prominent.

The old guys on 60 minutes came of age before the prominence of TV. Morley Safer’s bio on NPR said that when he started at CBS News everyone was judged on their writing ability, first and foremost.
Linda Ellerbee’s face is showing a pleasing amount of character.
Mike Wallace was an attractive and appealing man before his death at age 93.

I think the time is quickly evening the scales.

@ibstubro

Your mention of Linda Ellerbee makes me pine for one of the best news programs of all time (dare I say, better than 60 Mibutes ) because it had a wicked sense of humor in addition to hard hitting news segments.

And Ellerbee and Lloyd Dobyns were the perfect combo. I refer, of course, to NBC News Overnight which only lasted a few years unfortunately.

Because I’m a night owl, I wasn’t yet ready to call it a day immediately after Letterman. (This was prior to his move to CBS so he was on an hour later then.)

Overnight was the absolutely perfect way to end the day.

Anybody else remember it fondly? It won a crap load of prestigious awards (and yet still got cancelled) Networks are run by idiots who wouldn’t recognize a high quality show if it bit them in the ass. That was a perfect show in a perfect timeslot and you couldn’t find a better hosting team than Ellerbee and Dobyns.

@Buttonstc I loved Overnight, and also loved Ellerbee on “Our World”, which sadly only lasted one season.

I know. I loved Our World as well. But it was the type of show which really needed time for people to discover it and thus build its audience gradually. However, it was up against the Cosby Show and instead of putting it in a different timeslot, they just canceled it.

And again, networks are run by…etc. etc.

But she finally landed on cable with Nick News to once again show how a good news show should be run.

And, on cable, it could be rerun several times more on different days end times so it could build it’s audience.

I’m glad she finally landed someplace where they really appreciated her talents and ability for excellence. There were some seriously great shows presented by Nick News.

Andy Rooney ad Mike Wallace