At a time when viewers are fleeing traditional television shows, the CBS Sunday newsmagazine 60 Minutes remains in a class of its own. The 12 April episode, which featured Pope Leo and a story on great white sharks, drew an astounding 10.1 million total viewers. The show is trending as the most-watched news program for the current broadcast season. So, as the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

That’s what some CBS News employees and veterans are wondering, amid persistent rumors that the show’s 59th season will look very different than the 58th, which ends on 17 May.

The next season of the US’s most prestigious news show will be the first fully under the purview of Bari Weiss, the controversial heterodox opinion writer installed as editor-in-chief after Skydance Media officially completed its acquisition of CBS’s parent, Paramount Global, in August 2025.

One longtime network insider said to expect “massive changes” after the season ends, though the network is said to have no plans to blow up the format or to change the show’s award-winning mission. Layoffs are widely expected, however. “People [at 60 Minutes] are afraid and they’re waiting for something monumental to happen here,” said another network insider.

A CBS News staffer, who was not authorized to comment, expressed concern that Weiss would make changes that would damage the show, “just like she has done with everything else at CBS News.”

A third network insider cautioned, however: “They don’t want to turn it upside down.”

Still, the show’s cast will undoubtedly look different.

In February, correspondent Anderson Cooper announced he was leaving the show to spend more time with his family – and focus on the nightly show he anchors for CNN.

On 30 April, another prominent 60 Minutes correspondent, Sharyn Alfonsi, strongly suggested that she is likely to be “fired” before next season. Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington after being awarded the Ridenhour prize for courage, Alfonsi decried “the spread of corporate meddling and editorial fear” at the network, though she didn’t directly name Weiss, who caused a firestorm after shelving Alfonsi’s 21 December segment about the Trump administration deporting Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador. (Weiss had argued that the piece needed to be reworked to better convey the administration’s perspective.)

It was an extraordinary public rebuke from a current network employee, and although Alfonsi was channeling a sentiment shared by others at CBS News, it is widely presumed that she will not return to the show – a personnel decision that has the potential to cause significant backlash for Weiss and CBS News.

“If they don’t renew her, it is in direct retaliation for having the temerity to tell the truth,” Rome Hartman, a longtime 60 Minutes producer who retired last year, said in an interview. “I’ve worked with Sharon over many years. She knows herself, she stands up for herself, but she is nothing like a troublemaker. She’s a person that goes out and gets these stories and does them and puts herself at considerable risk doing them, and she just did what was right here and she’s paying a terrible price for that.”

Alfonsi’s likely departure could create a chilling effect for the correspondents who remain, a former 60 Minutes correspondent told the Guardian. “I just know that if I was there now, I would have a hard time knowing where the dial is, where the wind is blowing, what stories can you even suggest at the risk of alienating the powers that be,” said the journalist, who requested anonymity to protect relationships. In the past, “that was never the case. Ever. There wasn’t anything that was out of bounds.” A source close to the network pushed back on the notion that certain stories are off limits.

A CBS News spokesperson declined to comment when asked about potential personnel moves.

Even some outside the company have shared fears about the show’s future. CNN’s chief international anchor, Christiane Amanpour, last week expressed concern about Paramount Skydance’s chief executive, David Ellison (and his father, billionaire Donald Trump pal Larry Ellison), taking over the network, pointing to the “ideological realignment” of CBS News and “the destruction, potentially, of 60 Minutes”. “Nobody can match 60 Minutes for a brilliant television magazine show that’s been doing hard news and cultural news and for decades and decades – top-rated, top money-maker for the network,” she said.

Insiders predict that Norah O’Donnell, the CBS News journalist who has served in a rotating correspondent role since giving up her perch as anchor of the CBS Evening News in 2025, could be tapped to play a more significant role on 60 Minutes.

It was O’Donnell who got under Trump’s skin during an 26 April interview for 60 Minutes when she read from the manifesto of the man who allegedly attempted a mass shooting at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner the day before.

“I was waiting for you to read that, because I knew you would,” Trump told O’Donnell. “Because you’re horrible people. Horrible people … You shouldn’t be reading that on 60 Minutes. You’re a disgrace.”

Two longtime 60 Minutes correspondents, 84-year-old Lesley Stahl and 68-year-old Scott Pelley, are expected to remain with the show, even as Pelley has been targeted by conservatives for critical comments he has made about the Trump administration. Stahl reportedly lost out to CBS News journalist Major Garrett for an interview with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, that aired on last Sunday’s 60 Minutes, though it’s not unheard of for a network correspondent to conduct such an interview, and Garrett received favorable reviews for his questioning. As she has with other major newsmaker interviews, Weiss participated in the booking process. “It’s the editor-in-chief’s job to make decisions about bookings and interviews,” a CBS News spokesperson said. “Major is a world-class journalist and did a tough, fair and news-making interview.”

Weiss, who came to CBS News in October with no experience in television, has not spoken publicly about her plans for a revamped 60 Minutes and has not granted interviews. But she discussed her desire to “expand” the 60 Minutes brand during an employee town hall meeting in late January.

Calling 60 Minutes “one of the most important, valuable brands, not just to CBS News but to journalism in America”, Weiss said: “I think it should be at the heart and center of what we do … The idea that that should just be something people are encountering for an hour on a Sunday night doesn’t make sense to me, especially when there’s so much love and devotion and trust in that brand.”

The network is expected to look for opportunities to expand the brand’s reach and to embrace new platforms and formats. (Some past attempts at expanding the brand have been short-lived, including a weeknight spinoff called 60 Minutes II and one called 60 Minutes Sports that ran on Showtime for only a few years.)

During the town hall, Weiss said she would be “across” 60 Minutes’ editorial process but would not be micromanaging it, leaving that to the executive producer, Tanya Simon (the daughter of the legendary 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon), and the executive editor, Draggan Mihailovich. “I have no interest in disrupting a productive culture that exists in a show or a department in this company,” Weiss said.

But there are questions internally about how much sway Simon has over the show with Weiss more heavily involved. In her remarks on 30 April, Alfonsi suggested that Weiss had indeed meddled, and she recounted her unwillingness to change a segment that had already been screened and vetted. “My stance did not make my new bosses very happy,” Alfonsi said.

The show’s 58th season already began with a major change at the top, after Bill Owens – the longtime executive producer and the third in the show’s history – opted to resign in protest of what he said was corporate cowardice and meddling.

“Our owners were working to censor 60 Minutes, attempting to stop us from covering the difficult stories we had always brought to you,” said Owens on 30 April, after also receiving a Ridenhour prize for courage. Upon taking over the show in 2019, Owens said, his primary goal was to not “harm a hair on the head of this broadcast”.

While much of the broader discussion about the show has centered on clashes and controversies, those close to the show say its journalism has been rock-solid – and correspondents have shown no signs of pulling punches – so far.

“Just as a viewer, I think 60 Minutes has been 60 Minutes this season,” said Hartman, the former show producer. “I think it’s been a strong mix of hard stories and feature stories, which I think is what it has always aspired to be. And I think Tanya and the correspondents deserve a lot of credit for that.”

But, he added, “I am extremely worried that that will change.”

Michael J Socolow, a media historian at the University of Maine whose father was a prominent executive at CBS News, said he was hesitant to comment on 60 Minutes’ future because he had previously expressed certainty that the show would be largely left untouched, an assertion that now seems inaccurate.

Still, he expressed confidence in the show’s senior leadership, most notably Simon – though her role as executive producer was reportedly only contractually guaranteed for one year.

He also noted that “the 60 Minutes brand has survived several controversies over the decades”, mentioning the 2013 suspension of Lara Logan, a 60 Minutes correspondent, for a discredited report on the 2012 Benghazi consulate attack, and the mishandling of an interview in the 1990s with tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, an incident that Alfonsi said – in her December memo to colleagues about Weiss pulling her El Salvadoran prison segment – “nearly [destroyed] the credibility of this broadcast”.

“There have been issues in 60 Minutes’ history that damage the brand. There’s no question,” Socolow said. “And it survives and it goes back.”