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Fake-or-Fact Friday: Are These ‘60 Minutes’ Spinoffs Real or Not?

September 5, 2014

60 minutesEvery Friday we give you three news stories and ask you to pick which two or true and which one was made up. This time, we’re doing it a little differently. Below are a bunch of spinoffs of CBS’s venerable news magazine 60 Minutes. Can you guess which ones aired and which ones are pure fiction? (Answer is at the bottom of the post.)

A. 30 Minutes

In 1978, CBS introduced 30 Minutes to its Saturday morning cartoon lineup. Featuring none of the regular 60 Minutes cast (not even Andy Rooney), the show ran for four years with light news stories that would appeal to kids.

B. 120 Minutes

MTV’s long-running showcase of alternative rock music ran on the cable network from 1986 to 2003. But from 1984 to 1986, MTV ran another show called 120 Minutes—a two-hour long block of news oriented to people in their 20s. Produced by the news division corporate parent CBS, it was to fulfill an FCC “news and information” requirement in effect at the time. (In 1986, MTV established its own news bureau, MTV News, and re-used the name for the video show.)

C. 60 Minutes More

Comedies and dramas can be rerun frequently, but what about primetime news shows like 60 Minutes? Not so much, although CBS sort of tried to repackage old episodes of 60 Minutes. 60 Minutes More consisted of old 60 Minutes reports with newly filmed updates to those stories. It ran for just one season in 1996.

D. 60 Minutes: The Magazine

60 Minutes is a newsmagazine, using TV to recreate the format of a print news source, like Time or Newsweek. On its 25th anniversary in 1994, producers of 60 Minutes launched 60 Minutes: The Magazine…a print news magazine, based on the TV news magazine, which aped the format of print news magazines. Like the show, the magazine had 60 pages (of which a quarter was advertisements), reporting from Mike Wallace and Lesley Stahl, and a light-hearted editorial from Andy Rooney. (It folded in three months.)

E. 60 Minutes of Sports

A direct competitor to ESPN’s 30 for 30 series of hard-hitting sports documentaries and HBO’s similar Real Sports, Showtime debuted 60 Minutes of Sports in 2013. It’s a combination of brand new sports reporting and “classic” sports stories from old episodes of 60 Minutes.

 

 

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Answer: “B. 120 Minutes” and “D. 60 Minutes: The Magazine” are the fakes.

Want more things that sound true…but aren’t? Then check out Uncle John’s Fake Facts. (Really!)