By Tom Shales
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 31, 2006

Television, the master medium that dominated American entertainment for a half-century, is being pulled this way and that, going in seemingly contradictory directions at once. And no one knows for sure where the evolution is leading us.

Sometimes the passing of the old guard is epitomized in sudden, shocking and, in one conspicuous case, sorrowful events. This year, the death of Ed Bradley, stalwart veteran of the "60 Minutes" team, was a jolt not only because the viewing nation felt it had lost a friend and icon, but because it dramatized the fragility of the seemingly invulnerable -- even the show itself.

"60 Minutes" -- not only a rewarding national habit for decades but also a kind of lonely civilizing influence -- is a bellwether of myriad facets. Several months before Bradley's death, it was announced that fellow correspondent Mike Wallace, an amazing 88, would be lightening his workload -- although his energies and enthusiasms, and that magnificent broadcasting voice, appear undiminished -- and this disclosure, clearly not Wallace's idea, focused attention on the advanced ages of most of the show's correspondents. As with all news broadcasts, the program's audience "skews old," in demographic terms, and although it also skews affluent and influential, the age factor is an industry obsession.

It's discouraging, meanwhile, to concede there's an element of precariousness to even so seemingly inviolate an institution as "60 Minutes." To adapt and survive, the program has done what virtually every network news production now must do: Develop an Internet alter-ego to which viewers are referred for supplemental material and assorted ephemera (if it was edited out of the report that aired, then doesn't that mean it's probably not necessary?).

Everybody, of course, has to have a Web site. (Even Cottonelle toilet paper has a Web site; I haven't ventured over there to see what's on it.)

When the great "60 Minutes" surrendered to Web-site mania, there was something humbling about it, something moderately ominous. It's what the Web site represents that's discomforting: the Internet's encroachment on traditional media that continues apace every year, as well as the changing role of the audience that goes with it.

As TV changes, what's definite is uncertainty. What's reinvented today might be re-reinvented again tomorrow.

Ask not for whom the stopwatch ticks. It ticks for everything, even itself.