[6] Initially, 60 Minutes aired as a bi-weekly show hosted by Mike Wallace and Harry Reasoner debuting on September 24, 1968, and alternating weeks with other CBS News productions on Tuesday evenings at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

[10] This proved somewhat less than satisfactory, however, because in order to accommodate CBS telecasts of late afternoon National Football League (NFL) games, 60 Minutes went on hiatus during the fall from 1972 to 1975 (and the summer of 1972).

It was only when the FCC returned an hour to the networks on Sundays (for news or family programming), which had been taken away from them four years earlier, in a 1975 amendment to the Access Rule, that CBS finally found a viable permanent timeslot for 60 Minutes.

[citation needed] This move, and the addition of then-White House correspondent Dan Rather to the reporting team, made the program into a strong ratings hit and, eventually, a general cultural phenomenon.

(1980), in which the faux Kilpatrick argues in favor of the plane crashing, stating "they bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into"; and in an earlier sketch comedy film, The Kentucky Fried Movie, where the segment was called Count/Pointercount.

[20] From 1978 to 2011, the program usually ended with a (usually light-hearted and humorous) commentary by Andy Rooney expounding on topics of wildly varying import, ranging from international politics, to economics, and to personal philosophy on everyday life.

In 1990, Rooney was suspended without pay for three months by then-CBS News President David Burke, because of the negative publicity around his saying that "too much alcohol, too much food, drugs, homosexual unions, cigarettes [are] all known to lead to premature death.

[39] On March 25, 2018, the edition featuring Stormy Daniels giving details on her alleged affair with President Donald Trump drew 22.1 million viewers, the most since the 2008 Obama interview.

However, it has also become embroiled in some controversy, including (in order of appearance): On November 23, 1986, 60 Minutes aired a segment greenlit by Hewitt, concerning the Audi 5000 automobile, a popular German luxury car.

The story covered a supposed problem of "unintended acceleration" when the brake pedal was pushed, with emotional interviews with six people who sued Audi (unsuccessfully) after they crashed their cars, including one woman whose six-year-old son had been killed.

[48] Years later, Dateline NBC, a rival to 60 Minutes, was found guilty of similar tactics regarding the fuel tank integrity of General Motors pickup trucks.

[50] In February 1989, 60 Minutes aired a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council claiming that the use of daminozide (Alar) on apples presented an unacceptably high health risk to consumers.

A year after the 60 Minutes piece aired, Erhard filed a lawsuit against CBS, claiming that the broadcast contained several "false, misleading and defamatory" statements about him.

"[56] In 1995, former Brown & Williamson Vice President for Research and Development Jeffrey Wigand provided information to 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman that B&W had systematically hidden the health risks of their cigarettes (see transcription).

Bergman began to produce a piece based upon the information, but ran into opposition from Don Hewitt who, along with CBS lawyers, feared a billion dollar lawsuit from Brown and Williamson for tortious interference for encouraging Wigand to violate his non-disclosure agreement.

The incident was turned into a seven-times Oscar-nominated feature film entitled The Insider, directed by Michael Mann and starring Russell Crowe as Wigand, Al Pacino as Bergman, and Christopher Plummer as Mike Wallace.

The tribe considered the segment heavily biased in favor of the scientists, cutting out important arguments, such as explanations of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

In March 2010, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in the case, and the policy limiting media access to death row inmates remains in place.

[67] In recent years, the program has been accused of promoting books, films, and interviews with celebrities who are published or promoted by sister businesses of media conglomerate Viacom (which owned CBS from 2000 to 2005 and since 2019; both companies' shares since 2000 were majority-owned by National Amusements even during their fourteen-year separation) and publisher Simon & Schuster (which remained a part of CBS Corporation after the 2005 CBS/Viacom split and continued on after its re-merger with Viacom), without disclosing the journalistic conflict-of-interest to viewers.

[77] Davies' book, The Embassy House, was published two days after the 60 Minutes report, by Threshold Editions, part of the Simon and Schuster unit of CBS.

[79] On December 15, 2013, 60 Minutes aired a report on the workings of the National Security Agency (NSA) that was widely criticized[80] as misleading[81] and a biased "puff piece".

On March 30, 2014, 60 Minutes presented a story on the Tesla Model S luxury electric automobile, with Scott Pelley conducting an interview with CEO Elon Musk concerning the car brand as well as his company SpaceX.

However, several news outlets, as well as Jalopnik itself, expressed doubt over the authenticity of this explanation, noting the similar scandal involving Tesla Motors and the New York Times in 2013.

[89][90][91] Subsequently, Palm Beach County Mayor Dave Kerner accused 60 Minutes of reporting "intentionally false" information,[90] while Karol Markowicz of the New York Post characterized Alfonsi as coming off as a "political activist" in the segment.

[93] On May 16, 2021, Anderson Cooper's story in 60 Minutes on the flaws in facial recognition technology used by the police resulting in incorrect identification of people of color received backlash for denying credit to the black female researchers who pioneered the field.

The segment was criticized by the Algorithmic Justice League for "deliberately excluding the groundbreaking and award-winning work of prominent black women AI researchers Joy Buolamwini, Dr. Timnit Gebru, and Inioluwa Deborah Raji".

It was hosted by Christopher Glenn (who also served as the voice-over for the interstitial program In the News and was an anchor on the CBS Radio Network), along with Betsy Aaron (1978–1980) and Betty Ann Bowser (1980–1982).

In 2013, CBS's sister premium television network Showtime premiered 60 Minutes Sports, a monthly spin-off focused on sports-related stories and classic interviews from the show's archives.

[104] The piece revealed that CBS News had flown in staffers, including from Seattle and Rome, in early March 2020 to begin filming promotional material for 60 in 6.

[107] For the 60 Minutes 25th anniversary program in 1993, Charles Kuralt revisited notable stories and celebrity appearances and also interviewed Don Hewitt and correspondents, both the active and some former ones.