Nick Bilton brings in consultant as 60 Minutes shakeup deepens

Nick Bilton stepped into 60 Minutes as the program was already absorbing a rare level of internal shock, and he quickly brought in outside help to manage it. Kelly Funke, a television production consultant with more than a decade of experience, was in the room at Bilton’s first staff meeting and has been working alongside him as he tries to stabilize CBS’s flagship newsmagazine.

Funke’s role has been narrow on paper but broad in practice. She has accompanied Bilton during his first days running the broadcast and has helped organize meetings with staff members, producers and assistants. People inside the newsroom have described her work as an effort to “fix the trust” with employees, a sign that the problem facing the show is not just workflow but confidence in the direction of the newsroom itself.

The turmoil escalated sharply when CBS News fired longtime correspondent Scott Pelley on June 2, one day after a tense confrontation with Bilton at a staff meeting. Pelley later said the leadership of 60 Minutes was “no longer recognizable,” a blunt rebuke that underscored how badly relations had frayed. The departures and removals around the show have left staff unsure whether the program will be preserved in its current form or reshaped under new leadership.

The shakeup comes after CBS News named Bilton executive producer on May 28, replacing Tanya Simon and making him the fifth executive producer in the program’s history. Bilton, an investigative journalist and filmmaker who previously worked at The New York Times and Vanity Fair, took over a brand that has been on the air for more than half a century and remains one of American journalism’s most recognizable names.

The pressure on 60 Minutes also reflects a larger ownership shift at CBS parent Paramount. The FCC approved the Paramount-Skydance merger on July 24, 2025, and Paramount and Skydance announced the deal closed on August 7, 2025, creating Paramount, a Skydance Corporation. David Ellison, son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison and a supporter of President Donald Trump, now sits at the center of a broader rethink of the network’s direction, while the three remaining full-time correspondents, Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim, said on June 5 that they would stay and fight. That commitment bought time, but the decision to bring in a consultant shows management is still trying to repair a newsroom under strain without hollowing out the editorial identity that made 60 Minutes influential in the first place.