Tick... Tick... Tick... (27 page)

Aside from friendly jokes and knowing winks in the various testimonials to Hewitt that night, the dinner did nothing to resolve the differences between Hewitt and CBS. The next day, Hewitt sent Heyward a thank-you note; in it, Hewitt couldn't resist an allusion to the very issue he believed was behind Heyward's desire to remove him from his job: his age.

“It made me feel twenty years younger,” Hewitt wrote, “which means I'm now
60
.”

 

A few weeks later, in early January, Andrew Heyward took Don Hewitt to lunch at Gabriel's, a neighborhood favorite for CBS honchos, and told him, in amicable but definite terms, that the time had come for him to leave
60 Minutes.

The
Larry King Live
appearance had failed to galvanize the pro-Hewitt forces the way he had imagined. Hewitt's rage against CBS management had elicited nothing like the groundswell of support for Koppel in
2002
—nothing, in fact, but more resentment. It was clear to everyone, including the correspondents, that the time had come for change. And to most
60 Minutes
insiders, the notion of Jeff Fager coming in as their new executive producer was not nearly so dangerous or destructive as Hewitt had tried to make it seem.

A year had passed since Heyward first suggested that Hewitt step aside. Scheffler had eventually agreed to retire a year later, in June
2003
: that meant it was time for Hewitt to formally sign a new contract as well, spelling out the precise terms and timetable for his departure. After years of reluctance to do battle with an acknowledged giant of the TV news business, Heyward knew he must now act and accept the consequences, which would no doubt be acrimonious and ugly.

Heyward had made Hewitt a final offer: He could remain at CBS News as a well-paid consultant but only if he agreed to cede total control of
60 Minutes
to Fager at the end of the
2003
–
2004
season. From CBS's point of view, it was a generous arrangement; having pushed back the Scheffler retirement, the network was also giving Hewitt an extra year to make his exit. That extension also benefited CBS, in that it allowed Phil Scheffler's successor, Josh Howard, a full year as Hewitt's number two man before his likely appointment to succeed Fager as executive producer of
60 Minutes II
.

Unlike all the previous negotiations, however, this one offered no room for equivocation, no possibility for Hewitt to wangle another year at the helm of the show—no more chances to delay the transition to new leadership that CBS had been trying to pull off for years, and now needed to nail down. The days of delicate maneuvering were over.

Predictably, the negotiations turned briefly difficult—at one point, one high-level
60 Minutes
insider said he believed Heyward threatened Hewitt with dismissal unless he agreed to CBS's terms. But before matters reached the breaking point, according to the
60 Minutes
insider, Hewitt's longtime attorney, Ronald S. Konecky, entered the discussions and helped avert a crisis. In a matter of days, the tough postures were set aside; the deal was done. Hewitt would officially leave
60 Minutes
in June
2004
and remain at CBS with the title of executive producer, CBS News, for
10
years—at which point he'd be
90
. His new contract (including an estimated $
1
million annual salary) would retain all the perks of his current job, including health insurance, car service, and a liberal expense account.

After Heyward and Hewitt left Gabriel's, they walked back to CBS together. Along the way, Hewitt told Heyward an amusing anecdote about Henry Kissinger and Walter Isaacson, Kissinger's biographer and former president of CNN.

“Isaacson got a phone call from Dr. Kissinger's assistant saying that he'd like him to come to Thanksgiving at his apartment,” Hewitt said. “Isaacson was kind of amazed. He said, ‘Let me talk to my wife.' He was very flattered. Meanwhile Kissinger comes back from lunch. The secretary tells him that Isaacson would be getting back to them about Thanksgiving. ‘I didn't say Isaacson!' Kissinger said. ‘I said Isaac Stern!'” The two chortled over that all the way back to the office, almost as though they hadn't just battled over Hewitt's future in a way that did neither of them proud.

 

On the morning of January
28
,
2003
, readers of the
New York Times
got the news of Hewitt's new contract from a story in the bottom right-hand corner of the newspaper's front page—stunningly prominent placement for a story reporting on the transfer of power at a single network television show.

“Man Who Made
60 Minutes
to Make Way for New Blood,” read the headline on the story by Jim Rutenberg, the same reporter Hewitt had enlisted in his campaign against CBS two months earlier. Rutenberg's story reiterated Hewitt's earlier hard-line position against leaving
60 Minutes
and attributed the quick turnaround to, among other things, the CBS birthday dinner.

“A lot changed at that party,” Hewitt told Rutenberg. “I could feel a warmth in the room.”

The story represented Hewitt's decision to relinquish power as a “compromise,” and incorporated anonymous praise for Heyward's “deftly handling a potentially explosive situation.” Choosing his words with obvious care, Rutenberg avoided stating what was obvious from the events themselves—that Hewitt had, at last, been removed from the helm at
60 Minutes
—but he did note Hewitt's unexpected shift in position. “Still, the deal that Mr. Hewitt has accepted is similar to the one that he would not accept earlier,” Rutenberg wrote. “It surprised those on the staff who believed that by going public with his desire to keep his job, Mr. Hewitt had painted CBS into a corner. ‘Two weeks ago, I was telling people, he beat those bastards—they can't find it in their hearts to make him go,' Mr. Rooney said.”

CBS successfully put a happy face on the events. But within the news division—and particularly inside
60 Minutes
—it was obvious that Hewitt has been forced to leave the very job he'd loudly declared to all concerned, barely one month earlier, that he would never, ever quit.

 

Buoyed by his own spin—“How many
80
-year-olds do
you
know who just signed a ten-year contract?” he was fond of asking people—Hewitt snapped back into action.

Within weeks of the announcement, he was back in the newspaper with the announcement of his latest media stunt; this time, it was the return of the “Point-Counterpoint” format, with former President Bill Clinton and former Senator Bob Dole agreeing to
10
weekly debates on
60 Minutes
for the bargain price of $
1
million apiece. The news stunned everyone, including the correspondents and producers at
60 Minutes,
who'd been hearing about cost-cutting for years and were shocked at the price tag for something with such limited potential. Mike Wallace moaned about the money—he'd been cut back like everyone else—and the dubiousness of the idea, which he'd heard about only the night before the announcement.

Nevertheless, the media were immediately enraptured with the notion of Clinton and Dole squaring off. After two years of speculation about a possible Clinton TV career, it seemed incredible that the telegenic former president could have been convinced to become an ensemble player on Hewitt's show rather than the star of his own. Rather than call it “Point-Counterpoint,” Hewitt planned to call it “Clinton-Dole” or “Dole-Clinton,” depending on who spoke first each week. “When you've got a name like that, you don't waste it,” Hewitt told a reporter. Media observers speculated in print that the addition of Clinton and Dole could spark the show's ratings. And it did—for exactly one week, which is how long it took for most viewers to realize that the idea wasn't going to work. Due to the constraints of schedules, Clinton and Dole didn't appear together on camera; they filmed their segments separately and faxed opening statements to each other for reply. There wasn't a nanosecond of spontaneity in either man's performance; in their two-minute debate about President Bush's proposed tax cuts, neither managed to engage the other—or the audience.

The reviews were terrible. Instead of bolstering Hewitt's status, the idea seemed to have backfired in his face. “Bill Clinton wore a dark red tie,” wrote Tom Shales in the
Washington Post.
“Bob Dole wore a bright red tie. And that was about as striking as the contrast got last night when the two preening politicos made their debut as a debating team on
60 Minutes.
” Shales called it a “bore” and noted the amusing irony of Andy Rooney's commentary that night—about the shrinking content of everything, including
60 Minutes,
which according to Rooney now included only
42
minutes of programming and
18
minutes of commercials. “Don Hewitt can't even produce good TV with Bill Clinton and Bob Dole,” Democratic political consultant James Carville sniped to the
Philadelphia Inquirer.
“That's the real crime against television.”

The shows that followed grew even worse; one week, the two politicians actually announced that they agreed with each other. By May, rumblings in the press predicted cancellation—and Hewitt started to ruminate publicly about the segment's faults. “It could have been livelier if they had been in a position to talk about issues that separate right and left,” Hewitt admitted, instead of devoting so many weeks to deadly discussions about Iraq and foreign policy that offered nothing new. But in fact it illustrated nothing so much as Hewitt's desperate efforts to catch lightning in a bottle yet again, as he had so often before in his long career.

 

One afternoon in June
2003
, Don Hewitt showed up in Jeff Fager's doorway for a surprise visit. He'd never been prone to strolling all the way across the ninth floor to say hello—but that was before Fager had been given Hewitt's job.

“Hey Jeff, how are you,” Hewitt said. “I just thought I'd—”

“Hi, Don!” Fager said. He got up to shake hands with Hewitt. “We're just watching a Steve Hartman piece. Want to see it?”

“Sure,” Hewitt responded. Hartman was the CBS News correspondent and humorist hired by Fager to fill the spot at the end of
60 Minutes II
once held by Charles Grodin. Fager had been struggling to find the right voice for the segment; Hartman had lately been alternating with Bill Geist, a reporter for CBS's
Sunday Morning.
Rumor had it Fager had been turned down by both Jerry Seinfeld and Jon Stewart. The piece he was watching showed Hartman going to a high school reunion—not his own—to see whether people would act as though they remembered him.

Hewitt and Fager sat and watched that short segment on Fager's office TV. When it ended, Hewitt turned to Fager and asked, “Who was that?”

“Steve Hartman,” Fager said.

“Hartman,” Hewitt repeated. “Hartman?”

“Hartman,” Fager said. “Steve Hartman.”

“I don't know anyone's name,” Hewitt said, and then added: “He gives it away.” Hewitt meant that Hartman gave away too early in the piece the fact that he didn't really go to the school whose reunion he attended. “I wouldn't give it away,” he went on. “I would start with—”

“It's good, though,” Fager said, cutting him off. “He's good, isn't he? What do you think of him?”

Hewitt shook his head, unimpressed.

“You're not sure about him,” Fager said. “He's a talented guy.”

“You don't know with these things,” Hewitt said. “With Rooney you didn't know. Rooney was writing for Reasoner. And I said, ‘You know what? What if we took a news person and make a little cartoon character, looked like Andy Capp.'” Hewitt was referring to an animated character that Rooney helped create in the early days of
60 Minutes.
It was a typical conversational reference for Hewitt; he was often more likely to mention what happened
30
years ago on
60 Minutes
than on last night's show. “Rooney was thoughtful,” Hewitt went on. “You have to be thoughtful.”

“He's pretty thoughtful,” responded Fager, a little testily—speaking of Hartman, not Rooney. “This is sort of a funny one. But he's a pretty thoughtful character. It's tough to be like Andy. You have to be able to have that kind of body of work behind you to just say things.”