CBS/60minutes

60minutes

"60 Minutes," the most successful broadcast in television history, began its 42nd season on Sept. 27, 2009. Offering hard-hitting investigative reports, interviews, feature segments and profiles of people in the news, the broadcast begun in 1968 is still a hit in 2009.
Over the 2008-'09 season, "60 Minutes" grew its audience by 10 percent, averaging 14.29 million viewers, defying the industry trend and making it the number-one news program and the 13th most-watched broadcast among all television programs according to Nielsen.
It has won more Emmy Awards than any other primetime broadcast, including a special Lifetime Achievement Emmy. It has also won virtually every other broadcast journalism award, including back-to-back Peabody awards for excellence in television broadcasting in 2008 and 2009 to bring its total to 16. Other major awards won by "60 Minutes" recently include: four Emmys, three RTNDA Edward R. Murrow awards, the George Polk award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors award, an RFK Journalism Award, the Sigma Delta Chi award and two Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Reporting.
"60 Minutes" was created by Don Hewitt and premiered on CBS September 24, 1968. Jeff Fager is the program's current executive producer.
The correspondents and contributors of "60 Minutes" are Anderson Cooper, Katie Couric, Steve Kroft, Lara Logan, Scott Pelley, Byron Pitts, Charlie Rose, Morley Safer, Bob Simon and Lesley Stahl. Andy Rooney, the broadcast's commentator, began his regular on-air segment, "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" in 1978.