‘60 Minutes’ Plans To Be More Up To The Minute

CBS’s “60 Minutes,” gearing up for a challenge next month from a new Sunday edition of “Dateline NBC,” has announced some of the biggest changes in its format since the program was launched 28 years ago.

The revamped show will be more timely, with a greater focus on breaking news stories and fresh reports throughout the summer, and will add several new commentators.

Molly Ivins, the humorous, sometimes scathing Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist, will join the show as a weekly commentator, starting in the next several weeks.

Ivins will rotate with social critics and best-selling authors Stanley Crouch and P.J. O’Rourke in the commentator spot.

Crouch is the author of “The All-American Skin Game, Or the Decoy of Race: The Long and Short of It, 1990-1994,” which was nominated for a National Book Award last month. O’Rourke is a political satirist, is author of “Give War a Chance” and writes for Rolling Stone.

Andy Rooney will continue to close each broadcast with his crabby segment.

Executive producer Don Hewitt also announced officially that for the first time “60 Minutes” will broadcast original reports throughout the three summer months, which in the past have been devoted to reruns.

“Dateline” has already announced it will, as the occasion demands, lead its Sunday edition with breaking news. The new “Dateline” edition is set to debut on March 17.

Hewitt said last week that the weekly lineup will be altered to include just two of the lengthier “class pieces” every week, while a third “turnaround” segment, probably to be anchored by Mike Wallace or Lesley Stahl, will be introduced with a newsier angle.

“If it isn’t something huge like the Kobe earthquake or Prime Minister Rabin’s death, it’ll be in that segment. This week it could have been the IRA or Pat Buchanan in New Hampshire or NATO.”

Also boosting the immediacy of the program is a decision to tape “60 Minutes” on Sundays instead of earlier in the week, usually Thursdays.

“We’ll have lots of last-minute stuff,” Hewitt enthused. “After all, it’s the lead time that’s killing the Sunday newsmagazines.”

As for the addition of Ivins and the other commentators, Hewitt said, “We looked around and said, hey, we’re in the news business, and we need what the other first-rate journals, the ones we compete with every week, like Newsweek and Time have, and that’s commentary.” He said he wasn’t sure where the segment would fit in each week.

Joan Collins special

So, what’s Joan Collins to do now that she’s won her multimillion-dollar battle against Random House? She’s going to Lifetime.

The cabler announced Monday that it’s cashing in on Collins’ recent publicity by signing the “Dynasty” actress and author to host a series of yet-to-be-decided specials slated to run this summer.

Lucky for Collins, Lifetime programmers were searching for a celebrity host at the same time she was being sued by, and countersuing, her former publishing company. (Random House said her romantic-novel manuscripts were unacceptable and unprintable and wanted her to return a hefty advance. Collins, in turn, said she delivered as promised and should get to keep the money.)

Apparently all involved with the Lifetime specials thought Collins would be the perfect choice. As one Lifetime exec put it: “Random House may have said she’s not readable. But Lifetime says she’s watchable.”