Remembering the many '60 Minutes' spinoffs: For teens, sports fans, Quibi users (say what?), more

In late May, after several top producers and correspondents at "60 Minutes" were fired, the CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss said (in a memo) that this move was all about "a deliberate vision for ’60 Minutes’ to go beyond an hour on Sunday evenings to become a 360-degree product that reaches audiences wherever they consume information ..."

Sure, that sounded like corporate-speak, but what else?

How about deja-vu-all-over-again.

For nearly 50 years, "60 Minutes" has repeatedly tried that 360-degree thing. Here's a look back at six other efforts that tried to reach audiences wherever they consumed information:

'30 Minutes'

Who wasn't watching the CBS megahit "60 Minutes" back in 1978? Presumably kids, or at least teens, which led to this venture, with stories on "teen issues," like drugs, school vandalism, kids in prison, and so forth. While stars like Mike Wallace occasionally contributed to this Saturday 1:30 p.m. series, "30" had its own excellent reporters, notably Betsy Aaron, who had been hit by a car and nearly killed covering a Ku Klux Klan rally in Georgia for CBS News the year before, and Christopher Glenn, a CBS News radio veteran who had anchored the Saturday morning kids' news interstitial, "In the News." The reviews were decent — The New York Times starchily observed that it "continues to grow more pointed, less inclined to cater to the more popular held viewpoints of its audience"-- but the show wrapped for good in 1982.

'60 Minutes More'

One of the buzzwords in 1997 was "amortize," and nowhere was the word buzzier than at "60 Minutes," which had a vast archive just waiting to be repurposed or "amortized." CBS launched a cable channel called CBS Eye on People, where "60 Minutes More" joined 13 other news series. But "More" was really just a euphemism for "repeat." This show packaged three "classic" stories with a common theme, while "60" founder Don Hewitt occasionally supplied commentary. The channel lasted until 2000, but "More" was gone by the end of the first summer.

'60 Minutes Sports'

This sports-centered series, which aired on Showtime from 2013 to 2017, saw ESPN's "30 for 30" and HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" as both the model and challenge. That meant that simply repeating so-called "classic" stories would not do, at least entirely. Among the correspondents who joined to produce original content included   Sharyn Alfonsi, who had earlier left CBS News for ABC News, then returned for this (Alfonsi was among those fired this past May — no reason given why.) Armen Keteyian, Anderson Cooper, Lara Logan and Scott Pelley (another recent casualty) also contributed. Briefly revived in 2020 for six episodes, "60 Minutes: Timeless Stories" was anchored by James Brown.

'60 in 6'

In hindsight, "60 in 6" was the most eccentric spinoff but at the time the most radical — a six-minute long edition of "60 Minutes" for the mobile lives (and attention spans) of Zoomers who couldn't be bothered with that interminable hour on Sunday nights. Produced for Quibi, the mega-hyped short-form programming platform, both "60 in 6" and Quibi were doomed from the start, in part because they launched at the outset of COVID (after Quibi folded, Roku later bought its extensive catalog, but "60 in 6" appears gone forever). Reporters were hired (Seth Doane, Laurie Segall, Wesley Lowery and Enrique Acevedo) and stories assigned. But "60 in 6" like Quibi was snakebit: After the pandemic began, most of the production staff, including reporters, became infected; "60 in 6" was identified as one of the earliest COVID clusters in New York City.

'60 Minutes+'

"60 in 6" has a distant relative — "60 Minutes"-related videos on TikTok — but this was the direct descendant. After "60 in 6" folded, the staff and reporters there created "+" for new streaming platform Paramount+ which had just emerged from the ashes of CBS All Access in early 2021. Once again, the goal was to reach a younger, more diverse audience (the average age of the "60 Minutes" is 65+) but this time the stories ran 20 minutes each. For the premiere, Doane, Segall, Lowery, and Acevedo reported stories on QAnon, a reggaeton star, and climate change. The show was canceled after less than a year.

'60 Minutes II/Wednesday'

This launched to considerable fanfare in 1999, and considerable anguish too: Would "II" dilute the brand? Could "II" be something both reflective of the classic but smart enough to establish its own identity? Would viewers come? "II" in fact never quite escaped the shadow of the parent, and even that "II" in the title diminished its stature (a reason the name was later changed to "60 Minutes Wednesday.") "60" staffers dismissed the spinoff as "60 Minutes Jr." Dan Rather was the star anchor and correspondent but then came his Sept. 8., 2004 story on possibly forged documents about President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. ("Memogate." Remember?) After the ax fell the following May, CBS blamed (what else?) the ratings.