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...exactly a ringing endorsement of your firstborn child. But CBS executives are trying hard to assure doubters that 60 Minutes Jr. will be a credit to its not-so-proud parent. The new show's executive producer is Jeffrey Fager, who spent five years as a producer for 60 Minutes and has been a hard-news champion as executive producer of the CBS Evening News since 1996. The new show will have an entirely separate staff, which means it won't divert resources from Hewitt's operation; yet more than half its producers have worked at 60 Minutes, which presumably...
...though he will give up some producing chores so that he can devote more time to his new gig. The network has coaxed Evening News anchor Dan Rather to be an occasional contributor as well (he will continue to anchor both the Evening News and the weekly 48 Hours). CBS has also pursued ABC's Chris Wallace, son of 60 Minutes pioneer Mike, though it now appears unlikely that ABC will let him out of his contract. Current CBS correspondents Bob Simon and Vicki Mabrey are also expected to join the team. (A notable candidate left...
Hewitt and his confreres ended their campaign against the new show after they were persuaded, as CBS News president Andrew Heyward puts it, that "the train was going to leave the station, and they better not be tied to the tracks." Heyward vows that the new show will be "committed to their values." And Fager takes pains to separate 60 Minutes II from the time-filling rivals that Hewitt railed against. "This is an opportunity to give people more high-quality broadcast journalism," Fager says. "Isn't that a good thing...
...with the 60 Minutes name involved in the game of sweeps-week roulette," warns Hewitt. Will part-time stars like Rose and Rather turn out to be mere window dressing? And with only one of the four correspondents picked so far under 55 years of age (Mabrey is 42), CBS isn't exactly solving one rap against 60 Minutes: its older-skewing audience. In the cold, cruel Nielsen world, even a high-minded newsmagazine has to watch its back. It could be replaced by sitcoms...
DIED. MARY FRANN, 55, known to television viewers as Bob Newhart's chirpy wife on the CBS series Newhart; of undetermined causes; in Beverly Hills, Calif...