Bill Flanagan

Producer and author Bill Flanagan is executive vice president of the Viacom Music Group and editorial director of MTV Networks. He has been contributing essays to "CBS Sunday Morning" since 2001.

Among the TV series Flanagan created and executive produces are "VH1 Storytellers," which has been on the air since 1996; "CMT Crossroads"; and "Stop/Watch," a series of 60-second songs which premiered in the summer of 2013.

Among his past credits are "Legends," "Hotel MTV," "VH1 Archives," and "Spectacle: Elvis Costello With ...," as well as specials starring Paul McCartney, Garth Brooks, Clint Eastwood, Oprah Winfrey and Prince, and two live concerts from the Clinton White House.

Flanagan was one of the producers of "The Concert for New York City" after the 9/11 attacks; "The Beatles Revolution" for ABC; and "Elvis Lives" for NBC.

Flanagan has written for the Boston Globe, the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Spy, Men's Journal, Entertainment Weekly, GQ and many other publications. From 1985 until 1995 he was executive editor and then editor-in-chief of Musician Magazine.

He is the author of six books: "Written in My Soul" (1986), "Last of the Moe Haircuts" (1986), "U2 at the End of the World" (1995), and the novels "A&R" (2000), "New Bedlam" (2007) and "Evening's Empire" (2010).

Among Flanagan's contributions to "Sunday Morning" are appreciations of the music of Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Levon Helm; a guide to music that helps the listener transcend loss and sorrow; a grammar lesson on the proper uses of I and me; and an obituary for Hostess Cupcakes.

Flanagan was born in Rhode Island, graduated from Brown University, and lives in New York City with his wife and their three children.