Morley Safer

But the show was smart enough to pair Wallace's intensity with other textures.

The roster included legends such as Harry Reasoner, Ed Bradley, Morley Safer, Lesley Stahl, who has been with the program since 1991, Steve Kroft, and Diane Sawyer, who'd moved to ABC News in 1989, where she remains.

The show was also defined by legendary essayist Andy Rooney, who gave viewers a weekly dose of wit, contrarian observation, and human interest reflection that became as essential to the broadcast as the hard news investigations.

Early on, Rooney's Few Minutes, as it came to be called, alternated with a popular point/counterpoint debate segment that would soon be phased out.

I like that stuff.

Who is your favorite old school 60 Minutes correspondent? Morley Safer.

Was that that dude? That's interesting you say that because Morley used to do a lot of those artsy kind of things.

That's why I

never forget that August afternoon.

Morley Safer's report took only two days to get on the air.

It shattered viewers' perceptions of the war and was to help trigger the anti-war movement in America.

This was a very, very naive time in a certain way.

I'm telling you, it's an emotional response to seeing the manager twice a day in front of that camera and analyzing every single decision.

All right, Morley Safer.

As

always, we appreciate your time.

I love this.

CBS put this on 60 Minutes and Morley Safer explored one of the correspondents at the time.

This is back in the early 90s.

So I've heard about this.

I may have an opinion.

Yeah, I mean, look, uh, there wasn't anything on the program, like a Mike Wallace interview where you don't know what's gonna happen, or a Morley Safer feature that brings in things, and good writing, and...

It wasn't they were bad, they weren't bad.

As Lesley Stahl kicks it off, Lesley's 114 years old.

Go ahead

... let me weigh in on, let me weigh in on that.

When the Celtics weren't doing too well, the Boston Celtics, somebody said, "Larry Bird's not coming back walking through that door, so don't wait for him to come back." Mike Wallace and Morley Safer aren't coming back and walking through the 60 Minutes door.

They're not on...

But I guess it's better than nothing.

Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, and Ed Bradley aren't walking through those doors, folks, and if they do, well, they're not gonna 'cause they're dead.

[beep]

And you know what? It wouldn't matter if they did, if they did walk through those doors 'cause people aren't gonna stop watching other media rather than watching, uh, old-fashioned broadcast TV.