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Andy Rooney, the avuncular but irascible commentator whose essays on American life have concluded 60 Minutes broadcasts for more than 30 years, is leaving the news programme.
Rooney, 92, will make his final regular appearance on the TV show where he has worked full time since 1978, and as an occasional contributor since the programme’s inception 10 years earlier, the network said.
“There’s nobody like Andy and there never will be. He’ll hate hearing this, but he’s an American original,” CBS News chairman and 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager said in a statement.
Sunday’s broadcast featured Rooney’s 1,097th original essay for the programme.
He has written on important and weighty topics such as war, automobile safety, race in America, human relationships and politics, winning four Emmy awards in the process.
But he is perhaps best known for his pithy and often critical comments on American culture, its excesses, and the fast pace of change over the years.
Rooney’s TV essays resonated with millions of viewers, and he became a familiar face on the small-screen.
While his grumpy verbal attacks have taken humorous tones, they often skewered American bureaucracy, regulations or incompetence.
“I was frisked by a guy who wouldn’t have known a bomb from a Band-aid,” he said last year in a rant about airport security.
In recent years Rooney spent week after week grumbling about the complexities and excesses of 21st Century life, complaining about numerous ‘advances in technology’.
