60 Minutes - Cancelled

Via lawhawk:

I wonder if they'll cover "Newsweekgate" on a one-hour special?

The announcement was made this morning by Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS, at a breakfast meeting with journalists in advance of a presentation later today to advertisers.

Already ranked among the lower-rated programs on television, the magazine program was further imperiled after it broadcast a report in September that purported to raise new questions about President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service. After initially defending the report, the network announced that it could no longer vouch for the documents on which it was based.

In the wake of that broadcast, the producer of the report, Mary Mapes, was fired, and the correspondent on it, Dan Rather, departed several months later as anchor of the "CBS Evening News." He now works full-time as a reporter on the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes."

Now that the program has been canceled, Mr. Rather will probably be given a slot on the Sunday edition of "60 Minutes" through 2006, according to two people familiar with his contract.

But the cancellation is expected to have reverberations throughout the news division as correspondents, producers, editors and others are perhaps moved around. If the show does return, Mr. Moonves said, it would only be in occasional one-hour specials.