60 Minutes of Fame

**Dylan Byers** (0:01)
And the truth is, as you and I know, I think as Nick Bilton knows, actually there are other people who can do this, and in some cases, there are people who can probably do it in more novel ways.

**Peter Hamby** (0:14)
Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Puck's podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood, and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby.
It's Thursday, August 27th. Today, I'm joined by Dylan Byers, who previews the new look, 60 Minutes, debuting on CBS in just over two weeks, under the leadership and stress of Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton. There are new correspondents, new producers, new opinions, and of course, lots of questions about whether the show will take a new editorial direction. We also chat about how The New York Times is building AI tools for their readers and what that means for journalism in the chat bot era. We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.
Happy Thursday, everybody, and welcome to The Powers That Be. I'm joined today by our media correspondent extraordinaire, Dylan Byers. We're going to talk about the forthcoming season debut of the embattled Sunday night news magazine, 60 Minutes. We're less than a month away. Dylan's got a curtain-raiser on how it's looking under Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton. A lot of drama over there. We're also going to discuss The New York Times, figuring out a way to weave AI into search over there when you're at newyorktimes.com. If you're in the app, we'll see how that's going. It could bode well for the future of journalism or not, Dylan will explain. But first, Dylan, good to see you. It was good to visit the Grill Room on Tuesday and talk to you about media and politics, and how the Democrats can compete for attention. Thanks for having me.

**Dylan Byers** (2:04)
Peter, it was a pleasure to have you on. It was a pleasure to actually be the one who gets to ask the questions. I think I referred to you as Puck's resident political expert extraordinaire. So I appreciate the insights.

**Peter Hamby** (2:17)
No shade to Leigh Ann and Marianne, of course.

**Dylan Byers** (2:21)
We have a crack team of experts extraordinaire.

**Peter Hamby** (2:25)
So as discussed, 60 Minutes is debuting on September 13th. It looks like on the East Coast, at least, they're going to be bouncing out of a Packers Vikings season debut, as our guy John Kelly likes to say, 60 Minutes is just shoulder programming for the NFL.

**Dylan Byers** (2:41)
He's not wrong. He's partly true.

**Peter Hamby** (2:44)
But 60 Minutes is still an institution now. What I'm curious about, of course, is this whole off season, Bari Weiss comes in, the executive producer gets canned, Scott Pelly gets canned, a bunch of correspondents leave, they go, they complain about editorial interference in the show from Bari Weiss and other people at CBS who came in under David Ellison. Nick Bilton comes in, promises to change the world, tells everyone that they're dinosaurs. There's still, I mean, there's still leak after leak out of CBS, probably a little bit less than there was in the beginning, but this place doesn't feel steady, we shall say. So what should we expect, Dylan, from the new season of CBS? We're gonna have new faces, obviously. My question is, are people really, who traditionally watch 60 Minutes, and I like 60 Minutes a lot, I watch it every week, are people really gonna tune out because they've heard chatter about Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton? Do you think it will actually affect the editorial product? What are you hearing?

**Dylan Byers** (3:48)
Well, first of all, do I think people will tune out because of this? No, I don't think most people are, frankly, are aware that a lot of this is happening. I mean, I do think people understand that there's new ownership, that there's new leadership. I think it's impossible not to be at least cognizant of the fact that Scott Pelley got emotional with The New York Times. But, no, I think that a lot of people are going to watch Packers Vikings because it's the NFL and that's what we do on Sundays. And some of them will leave the TV on instead of jumping over to NBC for Sunday Night Football. And when they do, what are they going to find? I want to commend Charlotte Klein at New York Magazine, who recently profiled Bari and Nick's efforts to change 60 Minutes for at least introducing the possibility that this could actually be good. It could be better. It might not be.