Hewitt soon received a lucrative offer at the CBS
television network, which was seeking someone who had "picture experience" to help with production of television broadcast. He then launched the eight-time
Emmy Award-winning show
60 Minutes.
Within ten years, the show reached the top 10 in viewership, a position it maintained for 21 of the following 22 seasons, until the
1999–2000 season. After blowback, a more complete presentation of the story was allowed to air, but the handling of the issue remained "a dark, sorry period in the otherwise virtuous life of
60 Minutes." The overall scandal was the inspiration for the 1999 film
The Insider. Hewitt was portrayed in the film by
Philip Baker Hall. Declining ratings at
60 Minutes—after decades of being in the top 10, the show had dropped in rankings to number 20—contributed to what became a public debate in 2002 about whether it was time for CBS to replace Hewitt at
60 Minutes. According to
The New York Times,
Jeff Fager, producer of
60 Minutes II, was being floated as a possible replacement, In 2018, an internal
CBS investigation found that in the 1990s Hewitt had been accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting a former CBS employee over a period of years. CBS determined that the employee's allegations were credible and by 2018 had paid her over $5 million in settlements in exchange for her silence. ==Personal life and death==