LYCOS RETRIEVER 
60 Minutes: 60 Minutes Ii
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NEW YORK -- CBS said Tuesday that spinoff newsmag "60 Minutes II" will be renamed "60 Minutes" in the fall. CBS News prexy Andrew Heyward said the two shows would remain editorially independent and "cordially competitive"; it was simply time to validate the spinoff as the real deal -- a point Heyward stressed in a memo dispatched to staffers.
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Providing a prime-time venue for serious investigative reporting, for a while 60 Minutes was known for the confrontational manner in which correspondents like Mike Wallace approached their interview subjects-victims. What is most surprising about the show... is its extraordinary commercial success. It spent nineteen straight seasons in the Nielsen top ten (from 1977 to 1996), five as the most watched program on network television. Other networks, hoping for similar successes, introduced a variety of newsmagazines based on the 60 Minutes model. In 1999, CBS introduced 60 Minutes II.
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Last Wednesday evening, the CBS program "60 Minutes II" aired a story critical of President George W. Bush’s National Guard service. Its case was based largely on four memos apparently written in 1972 and 1973 by the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, Bush’s commanding officer.
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In 1999, a second edition of 60 Minutes was started in the U.S., called 60 Minutes II. This edition was later renamed 60 Minutes by CBS for the fall of 2004 in an effort to sell it as a high-quality program, since some had sarcastically referred to it as 60 Minutes, Jr. CBS News president Andrew Heyward said, "The Roman numeral II created some confusion on the part of the viewers and suggested a watered-down version".[22] However, a widely-known controversy which came to be known as "Rathergate," regarding a report that aired September 8, 2004, caused another name change. The show was renamed 60 Minutes Wednesday both to differentiate itself and to avoid tarnishing the Sunday edition, as the editions were editorially independent from one another. The show reverted to its original title with Roman numerals on July 8, 2005, when the show moved to a Friday night 8pm ET timeslot to finish its run. Its last broadcast was on September 2, 2005.
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The "60 Minutes" renaming comes as creator and exec producer Don Hewitt prepares to exit next month after 36 years at the helm. It's unlikely that Hewitt, who is fiercely protective of his show, would have embraced the idea of renaming "60 II."
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