Anderson Cooper Signs Off From 60 Minutes After 20 Years
Anderson Cooper delivered his final "I'm Anderson Cooper" on Sunday night, signing off from 60 Minutes after nearly 20 years as a correspondent for the program he grew up watching as a child. He called it "the honor of a life."
The farewell, which aired on the May 17 episode, was emotional and reflective — the kind of goodbye that doesn't happen often in television because journalists rarely allow themselves that kind of vulnerability on camera. Cooper did.
"I don't think the reality has hit me that I'm not going to be doing this any longer," he said in an extended segment posted to 60 Minutes Overtime. "To give up something you've watched since you were a kid — yeah, I will miss this."
Why He's Leaving
Cooper announced in February 2026 that he would not renew his contract with 60 Minutes. The reason was personal and straightforward: his sons.
"For nearly twenty years, I've been able to balance my jobs at CNN and CBS, but I have little kids now and I want to spend as much time with them as possible, while they want to spend time with me," Cooper said in his February statement.
His two sons — Wyatt, 5, and Sebastian, 3 — were born via surrogate in 2020 and 2022 respectively. Cooper has spoken publicly about how fatherhood has reshaped his priorities, and the decision to step back from one of his two major television commitments reflects that shift clearly. He will continue anchoring at CNN, where he has been a primetime fixture for more than two decades.
What 60 Minutes Meant to Him
Cooper joined 60 Minutes as a correspondent during the 2006–2007 season. At the time he was already an established CNN anchor — taking on the 60 Minutes role meant doing double duty across two of the most demanding jobs in American journalism simultaneously. He maintained that balance for nearly two decades.
In his farewell, Cooper reflected on what drew him to the program as a child and what kept him there as an adult. He described watching 60 Minutes after his father's death when he was ten years old — the house was quiet, and the family would gather around the television for the news.
"I grew up watching 60 Minutes. I was a weird little kid, I liked watching news," he said. "After my dad died, there was a lot of silence in my house and we would watch the news over dinner."
He recalled the awe of walking the same hallways as the legends who built the program — Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, Bob Simon — and the privilege of earning people's trust in a way that only 60 Minutes, at its best, is able to do.
"60 Minutes has always been a place, at least for me, that you get to step into somebody else's shoes," Cooper said. "You get to see things through their eyes and see what their struggles are and what they are facing and you learn from that."
His Plea for the Program's Future
The moment that cut deepest wasn't personal nostalgia — it was a direct statement about what Cooper hopes 60 Minutes will continue to be.
"I hope 60 Minutes remains 60 Minutes," he said. "There's very few things that have been around as long as 60 Minutes has and maintained the quality that it has."
That sentence carries weight. 60 Minutes has faced significant internal turbulence in recent years. Executive producer Bill Owens departed suddenly after more than 40 years with the program — a departure that sent shockwaves through the journalism world and prompted Cooper himself to speak out publicly in support of Owens. The CBS News organization has navigated difficult questions about editorial independence and pressure from ownership. Cooper's farewell included an explicit tribute to the program's "independence" and the "trust it has with viewers" — language that reads as both a celebration of what 60 Minutes has been and a quiet plea for what it needs to remain.
A Body of Work
Over nearly 20 years, Cooper reported from disaster zones, war zones, and living rooms around the world. He covered Hurricane Katrina from New Orleans, conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and countless human stories that found their way onto Sunday night television. He interviewed world leaders and ordinary people navigating extraordinary circumstances alike.
CBS News thanked Cooper for his contributions in a formal statement. The program has not yet announced who, if anyone, will fill the correspondent role he leaves behind.
For viewers who grew up watching Anderson Cooper sign off from 60 Minutes every Sunday night, the ending of that ritual is its own small loss. He seemed to understand that.
"I will miss this," he said. And then he was done.
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