First Television Newsmagazine.

The first television newsmagazine show, 60 Minutes, premiered on CBS on 24 September 1968 as a bimonthly program in the Tuesday night at 10 P.M. slot. Its cohosts during its first years were veteran news reporters Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace. The 60 Minutes format was the brainchild of CBS Evening News producer Don Hewitt, who saw the program as a "Life magazine of the air." Each hour-long show was divided into three twenty-minute segments, two handled by Wallace and one by Reasoner.

The Interview.

The interview subject was the primary segment type, with Wallace and Reasoner featuring during the first year talks with Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, French-German student radical Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Attorney General John Mitchell, rock singer Janis Joplin, Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth, and My Lai massacre participants Pvt. Paul Meadlo and Capt. Ernest Medina. Some of the segments were criticized as puff...