BNO NEWS ( Don Hewitt Died)

Photo: The first televised presidential debate between Sen. John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Don Hewitt of CBS News stands in the middle. September 26th, 1960. © CBS Broadcasting Inc.

NEW YORK CITY (BNO NEWS) -- Don Hewitt, recognized as a father of modern television news and the creator of the medium's most successful broadcast "60 Minutes," died of pancreatic cancer on Wednesday, the network announced. He was 86.

Hewitt won every major award numerous times and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1990. He was the recipient of many honorary degrees, among the most prestigious was the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Journalism from Harvard University he shared with the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward in 1992. He also won the Paul White Award in 1987, the highest honor bestowed by the Radio and Television News Directors Association, and the President’s Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Overseas Press Club in 1998. As executive producer, he shared in all of 60 MINUTES’ awards, including 13 Peabody Awards won by the broadcast during his tenure; he won two others, one awarded directly to him for his body of work in 1988 and shared another with CBS News in 1958. 60 MINUTES won several Alfred I. DuPont/Columbia University’s Awards, including the highest broadcast honor, the Gold Baton for him and the broadcast collective in 1987-88, scores of Emmy Awards – including a special Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 2003 and The Founder’s Emmy in 1995. The Founder’s Emmy citation reads, “Awarded to the creator of 60 MINUTES for a body of work crossing geographic and cultural boundaries to touch our common humanity.”

For the past several years, he had been involved in a variety of broadcast projects, mostly outside of CBS, including producing a primetime documentary about the Radio City Music Hall’s annual Christmas show.

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