May 28 (Reuters) – CBS News named on Thursday journalist and author Nick Bilton as executive producer of news magazine show 60 Minutes, marking the first time the show has tapped a leader from outside traditional television news.

Bilton, 49, is the fifth executive producer in the show’s history. His appointment is part of a shakeup at the 57-year-old program and follows a string of other unconventional hires of podcasters and opinion writers in a new strategy to draw younger audiences. He succeeds Tanya Simon, who became the program’s first female executive producer last year.

CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is pushing to reshape the newsroom with a stronger focus on streaming and digital audiences following Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of her outlet, The Free Press. While 60 Minutes was one of the top broadcast shows this past season with 9.7 million viewers on average, ratings are down more than 20% from a decade ago.

“Nick embodies the energy and ambition that animated the founders of the show. We cannot imagine a better fit,” Weiss and CBS News President Tom Cibrowski said in a note to staff.

Bilton previously worked as a tech journalist and filmmaker with an investigative background. At the New York Times, he covered how technology reshaped business and society.

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His reporting led to investigations by the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice and Congress, according to CBS News.

“Hiring Nick represents a deliberate vision for 60 Minutes to go beyond an hour on Sunday evenings to become a 360-degree product that reaches audiences wherever they consume information,” Cibrowski, 58, said.

David Ellison – the son of longtime supporter of President ​Donald Trump, Larry Ellison – ​acquired Paramount in August ⁠and installed Weiss, 42, in October. David, 43, helped secure regulatory approval for the deal that created Paramount Skydance, with the promise that the ​CBS network would reflect the “varied ideological perspectives” of American viewers.

Weiss’ plan to infuse a “streaming mentality” into the storied news magazine, which included restructuring the newsroom and starting news coverage on digital platforms and ending up on television, drew mixed reviews.

(By Brendan McDermid. Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; editing by Alan Barona, Rod Nickel)

AMSTERDAM, May 29 (Reuters) – U.S. rapper Kanye West, who has been barred from performing in several countries due to past antisemitic comments, is set to hold concerts in the Netherlands next month, after its migration minister said there were no legal grounds to deny him entry.

Dutch lawmakers had urged the government to bar West, who is now known as Ye, citing his past remarks and expressions of admiration for Nazism and Adolf Hitler.

“Solid grounds are needed to bar people from entering (the Netherlands). We have not found those in the analyses that were conducted,” Bart van den Brink said on Friday. “His past statements are not, at this moment, a reason to deny him entry.”

The 48-year-old rapper will perform at concert venue GelreDome in the city of Arnhem, about 100 km (62 miles) southeast of Amsterdam, on June 6 and 8. They would be Ye’s first European performances since 2014, GelreDome said on its website.

Arnhem authorities said no permits to protest the concerts had so far been requested.

Ye has faced a growing global backlash, including for his release of “Heil Hitler”, a song promoting Nazism.

In April, Britain denied Ye entry on the grounds his presence would not be conducive to the public good, forcing the cancellation of his planned Wireless Festival appearance in London. Later that month, he also postponed a Marseille show after reports the French government had sought to block it, and a concert in Poland was also subsequently cancelled.

In January, Ye took out a full-page ad in U.S. newspaper the Wall Street Journal renouncing his past admiration for Hitler and apologising for his behaviour, which he attributed to an undiagnosed brain injury and untreated bipolar disorder.

(Reporting by Charlotte Van Campenhout, Suban Abdulla; Editing by Joe Bavier)

LOS ANGELES, May 26 (Reuters) – Nicolas Cage says his new live-action series Spider-Noir will offer viewers a distinctive experience, with the option to watch it in black and white — “like an old movie” — or in highly saturated color designed to heighten visual intensity. He hopes the noir presentation will engage younger audiences who may be less familiar with black-and-white films.

Film noir, a 1940s American style, is known for its cynical protagonists, crime-driven plots, and existential themes. Cage, 62, said he crafted his performance as the title character, specifically for black and white, calling the dual-format release “a little revolutionary.”

The series, developed by Oren Uziel for Prime Video and MGM+, is based on the Marvel Comics character Spider-Man Noir. It follows an older, hard-edged Peter Parker — here named Ben Reilly — working as a private investigator in 1930s New York while confronting his past.

Cage stars alongside Lamorne Morris as newspaper editor Robbie Robertson, Li Jun Li as nightclub singer Cat Hardy, and Brendan Gleeson as Irish mob boss Silvermane.

After being inspired by the character’s popularity in Sony’s animated Spider-Verse films by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Uziel was keen to bring the duo on board as producers of Spider-Noir.

“I think that character really popped in those (Spider-Verse) movies, and they (Lord and Miller) were excited to try and create a standalone show for it,” Uziel, 51, said.

Cage, Uziel, and Gleeson all hope the show brings Marvel and noir audiences together, introducing younger viewers to the genre while drawing noir fans into the superhero world.

“I would hope it’ll open up a world for both directions,” Gleeson, 71, said, noting his optimism that Spider-Verse fans will gravitate toward some noir films and vice versa.

The series begins streaming on Wednesday on Prime Video.

(By Danielle Broadway. Reporting by Danielle Broadway and Matt SilversteinEditing by Rod Nickel)