‘Media giant’ and ‘legend’: 60 Minutes Australian founding producer Gerald Stone dies, 87

Founding producer of the Australian version of 60 Minutes Gerald Stone has died after a decorated career in journalism.

In 2015, Gerald Stone received an AM for “significant service to print and broadcast media as a journalist, television producer and author”. Picture: Channel 9

Gerald Stone, the founding father of 60 Minutes in Australia, loved the fierce competition of tabloid television, and the triumphs that came with it.

But the successes that came his way — and there were a lot of highlights over a media career spanning six decades — were, in his eyes, always a team effort.

The fledgling 60 Minutes team. Picture: Supplied

“He was a generous man, someone who wanted to inspire; he wanted to get the best out of us, but also the best out of himself,” said Channel 9 star Liz Hayes, who worked in the network’s famed news bunker alongside Stone in the 1980s.

”But at the same time, if you weren’t a little bit intimidated by Gerald Stone, there was something wrong with you.”

Stone died this week, aged 87, after a brief illness.

First Executive Producer Gerald Stone says the genius of the program is that #60Mins stories are talked about not just the next morning or the next week, but 40 years after the fact. That’s why the program has endured through the changing television landscape. #40YearsOf60Mins pic.twitter.com/egqKaDKcaz

— 60 Minutes Australia (@60Mins) December 2, 2018

Very sad to hear of Gerald Stone’s death. A lovely man who made a huge impact on journalism in Australia. https://t.co/fTkTJ57Lw0

— Jenny Brockie (@JenBrockie) November 5, 2020

He enjoyed a colourful career in Australian journalism, but is best remembered as the “founding father” of 60 Minutes, having imported the show’s template from the US at the behest of the network’s then-owner Kerry Packer in 1978.

“Packer called me into his ­office and started reminding me how badly I had let him down over the years,” Stone wrote in his memoir.

“With masterful timing, he suddenly switched from berating me to breaking the news I had just been given the most coveted job in television journalism, declaring: ‘I don’t give a f..k what it takes. Just do it and get it right’.”

Blessed to have caught up with Gerald Stone not so long ago. Vale Gerald. He took a chance on me and sent me to Sarajevo in 1994 when I was so green. Very sad loss pic.twitter.com/bqQAnue1J7

— jane hansen (@janehansen2000) November 5, 2020

John Westacott, who served as the program’s executive producer after Stone’s decade-long stint at the helm, described his former colleague as a visionary.

“Before Gerald, longform journalism on Australian television was restricted to Four Corners.

Stone was embedded with Australian troops in Vietnam as foreign correspondent for The Australian. Picture: Supplied

Gerald took the concept, and made it wildly popular on commercial television,” he said. “To get a smattering of world ­affairs on Australian television every Sunday night, told by Australian journalists for an Australian audience, was a remarkable achievement … more so because more than 50 per cent of television sets across the country would be tuned in to the show every week.” Born in the US in 1933, Stone moved to Australia in 1962.

Stone as a young producer. Picture: Supplied

The young journalist was to become a media giant. Picture: News Corp

He was embedded with Australian troops in Vietnam when he was a correspondent for The Australian.

Gerald Stone and wife Irene at their McMahons Point home in Sydney, after the release of his book, Who Killed Channel 9.