Bill Owens

Bill Owens is the executive producer of the venerable CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes, America's No. 1 news program.

Owens led 60 Minutes past a historic milestone in 2023-24 as the broadcast marked 50 straight seasons as the No. 1 news show across all broadcast and cable. The first time any program on television has reigned as No. 1 for five decades. In its 56th season, 60 Minutes reached one in three Americans at least once on linear and live streaming.

Owens has helmed the broadcast for landmark interviews with President Joe Biden, President Donald Trump, Pope Francis, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell. He has overseen consequential investigations including the five-year report on Havana Syndrome that revealed, for the first time, that Russia could be behind potential attacks on American government officials; a year-long investigation into the looting of Cambodian antiquities that have ended up in American museums, including the Met; and a look into Donald Trump's unsubstantiated claims that Dominion Voting Systems rigged the 2020 presidential election. 

Owens has steered 60 Minutes through the COVID-19 pandemic, the impeachments of former President Donald Trump, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war and more.  

Owens was named executive producer in February 2019 after 12 years of supervising the broadcast's content in two senior positions. First as senior producer and then as executive editor, Owens had editorial and production input in the creation of nearly a thousand 60 Minutes segments from conception through screening and broadcast. Before taking his management role at the news magazine, the 34-year veteran of CBS News excelled at every level of responsibility while covering the gamut of international and domestic news events.

Under his leadership, 60 Minutes has been honored with its second Insight Award from the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation (2022) and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Recorded News Program (2021.)

In addition to the many awards garnered by the 60 Minutes stories he has shaped and supervised, Owens has received numerous Emmy Awards, an IRE Award and contributed to a RTDNA Edward R. Murrow Overall Excellence Award. Towson University, Owens' alma mater, honored him with an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters in May 2012. He has been nominated by the Producer Guild Awards for Outstanding Producer of Non-Fiction Television in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Prior to his senior roles with 60 Minutes, in 2012, Owens co-executive produced and launched 60 Minutes Sports, a monthly sports edition of 60 Minutes that ran five seasons on Showtime. Owens also launched 60MinutesOvertime.com, the first website programmed entirely with originally produced 60 Minutes content, and has supervised its staff and production since its debut in 2010.

Owens joined 60 Minutes' senior staff as senior broadcast producer in 2007 from the "CBS Evening News," where he also served as senior broadcast producer. He first joined 60 Minutes in 2003 and worked with Scott Pelley producing segments that included coverage of Hurricane Katrina, the genocide in Sudan, climate change and a memorable profile of controversial NFL linebacker Bill Romanowski.

Before that, the Pelley-Owens team produced segments for 60 Minutes II, highlighted by an hour-long interview with President George W. Bush on the first anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The team also covered the American invasion of Iraq as a unilateral correspondent-producer team on the ground, contributing news-making reports to all CBS News programs.

In the late 1990s, Owens was the CBS News senior White House producer. Working with Pelley, Bill Plante and Rita Braver, he covered the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and broke major stories in the scandal that ran up to the historic event, in addition to many other Washington stories. Owens was the anchor producer for Paula Zahn and Harry Smith when they anchored "CBS This Morning." Prior to that, he was the broadcast's coordinating producer in New York. 

In his first jobs for CBS, Owens served as a national desk assignment editor, field producer and desk assistant for CBS News and for WCBS-TV, the CBS-owned station in New York.

Owens began his journalism career in 1988 as a summer intern for CBS News working at the national political conventions in Atlanta and New Orleans.

Owens is from Oyster Bay, New York. He graduated from Towson in 1988 with a Bachelor of Science degree in mass communications. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and has two children.