Logies 2018: 60 Minutes Australia gets Hall of Fame award

LIZ Hayes conceded there had been “good times and bad”. Now, despite recent controversies, Nine’s flagship current affairs show 60 Minutes was inducted into the Logies Hall of Fame.

RECENT controversies aside, Nine’s flagship current affairs show 60 Minutes was honoured with an induction in the Logies Hall of Fame.

Soon to notch-up four decades on air, the program took a hit in credibility in April 2016 when reporter Tara Brown and her team were imprisoned in Lebanon over a bungled child abduction.
Earlier that year journalist Liz Hayes was caught up in a scandal when her crew was attacked while in Sweden reporting on the refugee crisis.

“I think sometimes you can make a bad decision, I can’t colour it up any more than that,” veteran reporter Hayes said on the red carpet at The Star on the Gold Coast.

“I guess sometimes you just get it wrong but I think if you own it, the next best thing you can do is move on and try and not to do that again.”

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Liz hayes accepts the Hall of Fame Award for 60 Minutes. Picture: Supplied

Hayes continued: “To be honest anybody or any program that makes 40 years has probably got a good reason to celebrate. I think in the end, if we stay with what we always try to do, which is tell good stories, stay in our lane if you like, everybody has a very good mission really. Ultimately it is about telling good stories, sometimes we don’t always go according to plan.”

The program has won several Logies in the past, including five silver nods, a special achievement award and received nominations for a further six gongs.

While usually awarded to a person, other shows to take home the Hall of Fame honour in the past include Play School (2006), Neighbours (2005) and Four Corners (1992).

The 60 Minutes team at the Logies this year. Picture: Luke Marsden

Journalist Jana Wendt presented the award on the night with a raft of 60 Minutes faces from years gone past taking part in the celebrations, including inaugural executive producer Gerald Stone who started the show in 1979.

Late media mogul Kerry Packer nearly axed 60 Minutes when Stone didn’t include a story about the British elections in its first episode.

“So wonderful to see the program I started to see it still going strong,” Stone said. “I don’t think anybody could have thought that a program that started with such bad vibes would last 40 years, I certainly can’t think of another like it. But never in those 40 years has it ever stopped, it just goes from strength to strength.”

60 Minutes boss Gerald Stone. Picture: Supplied

Current executive producer Kirsty Thomson said: “It’s a program led by the best reporters, producers and crews who know how to tell uniquely compelling stories. Story telling is in the program’s DNA and has been from the beginning. We still quote Gerald to each other in production meetings — ‘Show me, don’t tell me’, ‘If there’s a flood the only person you want to interview is Noah’. This milestone reminds all of us at 60 Minutes how far we have come, now in our 40th year and still telling stories Australian’s want to watch. It also reminds us of the great values Gerald, George (Negus), Ray (Martin), Ian (Leslie) and Jana (Wendt) instilled in the earliest broadcasts, values we still hold dear today.”

PAST HALL OF FAME WINNERS

2017 Kerri-Anne Kennerley

2016 Noni Hazlehurst

2015 Home and Away

2014 Peter Harvey

2013 Brian Henderson

2012 Molly Meldrum

2011 Laurie Oakes

2010 Brian Naylor

2009 Bill Collins

2008 John Clarke

Originally published as Logies 2018: 60 Minutes Australia gets Hall of Fame award