don hewitt

So we come to that time of year when we list all of the TV celebrities that have died over the past year. We hear about these people passing away at various points of the year (sometimes a few the same week), but it's really odd to see them all listed together at once like you'll see after the jump.

It's like 40% of pop culture dies every year.

Whitney Houston to appear on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show''s season premiere, Shelley Long returns to television, John Hawkes joins 'Lost' and more of today's top TV headlines.

Newsman and producer Don Hewitt has died at the age of 86.

Hewitt is probably best known for creating 60 Minutes and ushering in the genre of the TV news magazine show. He also produced The CBS Television News in the late 40s and later The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. He also directed various TV shows and specials, including See It Now (Grant Heslov played Hewitt in the 2005 movie Good Night, and Good Luck), Presidential Timber, and One Plane, One Bomb, and even produced the first Presidential debate on TV, Nixon vs. Kennedy.

Who knew that after retiring from 60 Minutes that Don Hewitt, the show's legendary executive producer, would focus his passions on the Rockettes? Apparently he's had fond memories of the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall, and he and NBC have decided to bring it to TV this holiday season, according to Jacques Steinberg of The New York Times.

Steinberg tells the story of how Hewitt contacted Charles Dolan, chairman of Radio City Productions' parent company, Cablevision. He then called up NBC Universal president Jeff Zucker when his old network CBS, passed on the idea.

In-your-face television journalist Mike Wallace answers some tough questions on this Sunday's edition of 60 Minutes. The 88-year-old news veteran is retiring from the program and revealing a lot about his personal life, including the revelation that he attempted suicide 20 years ago. He had a roundtable discussion with fellow 60 Minutes jouralists Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft, Leslie Stahl and Morley Safer, who got his old friend to open up about his battle with depression. Wallace also says that, since his suicide attempt, his life has been better. It's not clear whether he admits how he tried to kill himself.

The retrospective, called I'm Mike Wallace, airs Sunday at 7 pm on CBS. It also includes clips of some of his most memorable interviews.