Andrew Heyward
CBS News President Andrew Heyward announced in October 2005 he would be leaving his post when his contract expired at the end of the year.
Heyward assumed the role in January 1996, making his tenure the second-longest of any president in the 47-year history of CBS News. (Richard Salant ranks first.)
During that time, CBS News programming has grown significantly in audience, regularly scheduled hours and profitability. CBS News' tradition of journalistic quality and integrity has also been recognized with a significantly higher number of broadcast journalism's most prestigious awards.
Under Heyward's tenure, two CBS News programs were added to the network's schedule: 60 Minutes Wednesday, which debuted in 1999 and ran until fall of 2005; and the two-hour Saturday Early Show, which gave the News Division an important presence in a new daypart.
CBS News' weekday morning broadcast was re-launched as The Early Show in a state-of-the-art, street-level studio on Fifth Avenue in New York City and has enjoyed its highest audience and demographic levels in six years; the flagship CBS Evening News was heralded for its rededication to hard news coverage; and Face The Nation and CBS News Sunday Morning experienced significant audience and demographic growth.
CBS Radio News was aggressively improved to industry acknowledgment. CBS Newspath, the world's largest satellite newsgathering system and 24-hour news service of CBS News, launched Newspath Now, an advanced digital news-delivery system designed to meet the needs of local news producers. CBS News, along with ABC News and Fox News, created Network News Service (NNS), an unprecedented domestic news cooperative designed to provide a more comprehensive service to affiliate news departments.
CBS News not only began producing news for other units of Viacom, including the BET Nightly News, a joint production with BET News that ended in 2005. CBS News Productions unit continues to grow as a production company that creates a diverse mix of non-fiction and reality programming for domestic and international markets, including network and cable television, home video, CD-ROM, audio books and in-flight, as well as schools and libraries.
Heyward also spearheaded the Division's move into new media. Its award-winning website, CBSNews.com, has become increasingly competitive and a leader in providing free, advertiser-supported broadband video. Heyward also was a key force in the establishment of the leading financial news website, CBS MarketWatch, and served on its board of directors from its founding in 1997 to its acquisition by Dow Jones in January 2005.
Before his promotion to President, Heyward was executive producer, CBS Evening News, and Vice President, CBS News (October 1994-January 1996).
Prior to that, he was executive producer of the CBS News magazine Eye to Eye (February 1993 October 1994). He was also responsible for developing and launching 48 Hours, the primetime CBS news hour that premiered in January 1988. Under his leadership as executive producer, 48 Hours achieved critical acclaim and wide recognition for its innovative style of reporting. The broadcast has won such prestigious honors as a George Foster Peabody Award, two Ohio State Awards, the Overseas Press Club Award and an Edward R. Murrow Brotherhood Award. Heyward has also won 12 national Emmy Awards.
He was senior broadcast producer of the CBS Evening News With Dan Rather (May 1986 October 1987). Prior to that, he was a senior producer of the CBS Evening News (1984-86), having joined the broadcast as a field producer in March 1981.
Heyward was executive producer of "The Six O'Clock Report," the evening news broadcast on WCBS TV, the CBS owned television station in New York (1978 81). Earlier, as producer of the broadcast, he won a local Emmy Award in the Outstanding News Program category. He joined the station in 1976 as a news writer.
Heyward was born in 1950 in New York. He was graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1972 with a B.A. in history and literature and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He and his wife, Jody Gaylin, live in Hastings on Hudson, N.Y. They have three children.