Scott Pelley is ready for life after 60 Minutes.
The broadcast journalist, whose firing in early June from the newsmagazine made national headlines, has signed with CAA for representation, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
The major talent agency will rep Pelley in all areas as the author and correspondent looks for life after CBS News, where he has worked for 37 years. Of note, Pelley’s friend and former 60 Minutes colleague Lesley Stahl is also a CAA client.
Pelley had a very fiery clash with 60 Minutes’ new executive producer, Nick Bilton, in an internal network town hall on June 1 that went public. In that meeting he took aim at Bari Weiss, CBS News’ new editor-in-chief who was hired in October of last year by Paramount mogul David Ellison. Pelley described Weiss’ early moves at the network as akin to “murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place; she was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.”
He then took aim Bilton’s credentials, calling his Vanity Fair and New York Times work “slender qualifications.” The new exec producer replied to staff a day later to say that Pelley “hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort.”
Pelley was one of 60 Minutes’ top correspondents, reporting from the field and interviewing some of the biggest and hard to get newsmakers, from then-FBI Director James Comey to President Joe Biden to Pope Francis. He also made a name for himself reporting from numerous battlefields around the world, from Afghanistan to Ukraine.
In a farewell note, Pelley told staff, “60 has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.”
