5 Questions For…Jeff Fager
Alissa Krinsky
TVNewser Contributor
Jeff Fager is the Executive Producer of 60 Minutes, which debuted forty years ago tomorrow, on September 24, 1968.
The program begins its 41st season this Sunday, as it continues to post strong ratings. The show’s success, Fager says, is largely due to having “the most talented reporters in the business, both on and off the air.”
Fager took the helm of 60 Minutes in June 2004 after serving as EP of 60 Minutes II and of the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. Previously, he had been senior broadcast producer for Evening News and a producer at 60 Minutes (1989-1994).
Fager began his career in local news, as a production assistant at Boston’s WBZ-TV. He is a Colgate University graduate.
1. TVNewser: In an age when conventional wisdom says the public wants to watch ‘softer’ news…60 Minutes continues its successful 40-year run because…
Fager: I think the size of our audience proves the conventional wisdom is wrong. We work under the assumption that most Americans want us to cover important stories. I think people expect it when they see the 60 Minutes stopwatch ticking.
They expect us to be tough yet fair and cover any story we think is worthwhile, even if it wouldn’t seem like “good TV” at other organizations.
That said: we can never afford to be boring. We work hard at telling our stories to hold the viewer’s attention. It’s exactly what Don Hewitt taught us, and what Fred Friendly taught him — you can make important stories interesting if you work hard at telling them well.
(continues after the jump)
We also do our best to keep up with the news by covering stories that are current. We have just finished a special edition with the presidential candidates. We have teams in both war zones right now, and we have teams on the financial crisis.
Beyond that I think the brilliance of Don’s creation is that if you don’t like the story you are watching, there’s a good chance you might like the next one. So we mix hard stories with profiles and adventures that take you places far and wide — the kinds of stories you can’t find anywhere else.
What I have left out so far is probably the most important element of our success: we have the most talented reporters in the business, both on and off the air, who share a strong sense of pride about what we put on television each and every Sunday night.
2. TVNewser: The impact of 60 Minutes on the television news industry:
Fager: 60 Minutes changed the television news business a long time ago because of money — not by spending it but by making it — the show earned a fortune and everybody noticed. Before that happened news was considered a public service…but because of 60 Minutes news became a profit center. And wow, look what has happened since — an explosion of television news. Obviously its not all for the better considering that, in the interest of profits, so much junk gets labeled news.
3. TVNewser: My thoughts on the median age — 60 years old — of the program’s viewers:
Fager: It concerns me. I think about it all of the time. It’s a difficult problem for most traditional news organizations.
What we won’t do is change the way we cover stories or start covering stories that will alienate our core audience. But I believe our stories DO appeal to younger viewers and the trick is to figure out a way to get them to tune in more often or to go looking for them on other platforms. It is a significant reason behind our relationship with Yahoo where we show exclusively produced video clips from our stories.
We’ve been on Yahoo for almost three years, since just after video started to proliferate the internet, and since then the audience has grown exponentially. Millions of internet users have found us on Yahoo. This calendar year we are expecting more than 125 million video streams on Yahoo. That’s a huge audience and the average age of those 60 Minutes viewers is 37.
So our strategy is to build our internet presence with the expectation that some of those viewers may seek out the mother ship on Sunday night or go to our 60 Minutes website to see our stories.
4. TVNewser: During my tenure as Executive Producer, the toughest challenge faced by 60 Minutes:
Fager: Ed Bradley‘s death was a terrible blow to all of us here. We still haven’t recovered from that loss and I don’t think we will ever get over it. He was that unique and that important to this broadcast because he was such an extraordinary person and because of his superior talent.
He left a gaping hole and I will never forget how everybody else raised the level of their efforts and their game to make up for the loss. That was especially true of Steve [Kroft] and Lesley [Stahl] and Scott [Pelley] and Morley [Safer], and all of Ed’s producers who are some of our most talented people: Michael Radutzky and Harry Radliffe and David Gelber and Ruth Streeter.
5. TVNewser: Forty years from now, 60 Minutes will be…
Fager: 80 years old.