I adore 60 Minutes. I love that the oldest surviving TV show in prime time is still among the very best. I'm thrilled that it caters to intelligence rather than panders to stupidity. Living up to its name, it's 60 minutes of outstanding television.
Well, 55 minutes, anyway...
"A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney," the closing feature most weeks, has ended the show on an off note. This isn't ageism, or a rejection of tradition. On the contrary: It's a dissatisfaction with what appears to be creative laziness.
Look, you're not going to find me complaining about a veteran journalist holding onto a high-profile post. A job on 60 Minutes is the closest thing on TV to a tenured position, and television is the better for it. At 80 90, Andy Rooney represents a segment of the population heard from much too seldom, and he's done some really good work over the years. I still remember, and treasure, his reports for the public TV series The Great American Dream Machine -- and that's almost 40 years ago.
But of late, Andy Rooney has started sliding into a caricature of himself. I can't recall the last piece he presented which required him to leave his office. He's done reports on what's in his desk drawers, what's in his incoming mail, and what his desk is made of. He's even done a piece in which - I swear -- he complained about the spelling of the word February. (See picture above.)
This on one of the best, most-watched shows on television, enjoying one of its strongest journalistic seasons in years. No wonder Craig Ferguson, on his own CBS series, makes fun of Andy Rooney more and more frequently.
In Sunday's installment on 60 Minutes, Rooney read letters sent to him by viewers. One of them nailed it on the head: "Andy, you need to get out more." Please do that, Andy, or consider abdicating your high-profile throne.
A decade ago, when CBS mounted its ill-conceived 60 Minutes II spinoff, it tried other people in the Andy Rooney slot, including comedian Jimmy Tingle. That didn't work at all, but now or later, the network will have to confront the necessity of replacing Andy Rooney.
The heir to that throne can't help but skew younger. Even Larry King would shave five 15 years off the total. But what 60 Minutes and CBS should be looking for is someone who can end the show with energy, vitality and creativity -- without sacrificing Rooney's best quality, a definite and often defiant point of view.
Suggestions?
If you want someone as smart, and wide-ranging, as the rest of 60 Minutes, hire Robert Krulwich, the PBS and NPR science host and commentator whose sense of humor is as contagious as his sense of wonder. He'd be different. And, I suspect, he'd be fantastic.
If you want someone to connect to the average viewer, and to continue Rooney's tradition of being obsessed with the minutiae of daily life, why not go straight to the top and hire Jerry Seinfeld?
A few minutes a week should fit into his schedule nicely -- and if there's one guy who can entertain by talking about nothing, Seinfeld's the guy.
Or, if you don't want a guy, but a woman, why not go with Bonnie Hunt?
She's covering a lot of the same territory on her daily talk show already. And if Andy Rooney can spend time on 60 Minutes delivering a rant about the R's in February, why can't Bonnie Hunt deliver a rant about the rats in her kitchen? Yes, she has her own show already. But so does Anderson Cooper, and he gets to be on 60 Minutes anyway.
Finally, there's Craig Ferguson. He does a funny Andy Rooney impression already -- all arms and snarls and eyebrows -- and, on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, already ends each show by taking a few minutes to ask viewers what they learned on the show that night. And even if Ferguson just riffs for a bit at the end of 60 Minutes, as he does at the beginning of his own show, it would be a perfect piece of cross-promotion for a late-night CBS talk show that has more than earned the support.
I'm not trying to push Andy Rooney out of a job -- just to prod him into taking it a little more seriously again. And, at the same time, I'm doing what CBS should be doing: looking down the road to the next move on the chessboard.
Krulwich, Seinfeld, Hunt and Ferguson are some of my nominations. What about yours?