Former newspaper editor Don Hewitt joined CBS's news department in 1948, and by 1963, he'd become executive producer of The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. A couple of years later, he'd been relegated to making serious, long-form news documentaries. "I did a series of Town Meetings of the World, in which we linked up world statesmen on the satellite. You could fall asleep in the control room," Hewitt told the Television Academy. At one point, he saw that the documentaries pulled in about 10 percent of the TV audience and he started thinking about ways to double it. "I came up with an idea: make the hour multisubject to deal with people's attention spans, package reality as attractively as Hollywood packages fiction, and use very personal journalism," Hewitt concluded.
According to Vanity Fair, Hewitt developed the idea further with another inspiration in mind: Life magazine. The mid-century publishing phenomenon used bold, striking, and large photographs (along with extensively researched copy) to tell a mixture of stories both serious and light. (In a press release, Hewitt said, "The subjects might be anarchy in the cities, Charles De Gaulle, mini-skirts, or Robert Kennedy.") Hewitt aimed to make a television version of Life, combining visuals with compact, insightful storytelling. Thus, the first "newsmagazine" on TV was born. 60 Minutes followed a magazine format, and still does to this day, presenting segments as chapters and using a magazine cover mockup as its logo.
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