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On Sunday, Michael Vick will be interviewed on 60 Minutes in hopes of showing contrition, making a case for his NFL comeback and generally doing as much PR as possible to rehabilitate his image. The former Atlanta Falcon quarterback and NFL poster boy is pretty desperate to get back into the league -- and the money that comes with it.

Michael Vick, as you probably know, was once the highest paid quarterback in the NFL. He was on the cover of magazines and was considered an unstoppable force on the field. Off the field, however, he was running an illegal dog-fighting business. He spent most of the last two years either in court or in prison for his involvement in a syndicate that promoted gambling and killed dogs.

Have we seen the last of Mike Wallace on TV? If you believe his son, Fox newsman Chris Wallace, the answer is yes. Mike Wallace, who has been recovering from a January triple bypass heart surgery, recently had a fall in his home in New York. Fortunately, Mike wasn't badly hurt, but the doctors are watching him closely in the hospital because of the complications from his heart surgery. He is on blood thinner because of the bypass and if he starts to bleed from the fall, he could bleed out.

According to Wallace's son, Chris, host of Fox News Sunday, the heart "is working fine," but he added that his 90 year old father is done with TV. Does CBS know that for sure? I mean, will there be no future Mike Wallace interviews or special interviews? He retired from 60 Minutes in 2006, but remains with the network as Correspondent Emeritus. Chris made it sound like there will be no more TV ever for Mike Wallace.

He also said of his father, "He's doing really well," having spent time with him while he was in New York at Fox's studios to report on the presidential primaries.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Chris Wallace is on the short list for replacements if -- more likely when -- Katie Couric departs the CBS Evening News anchor desk. Wallace, son of the CBS elder statesmen and 60 Minutes attack dog Mike Wallace, has been host of Fox News Sunday since 2003. But the guy isn't interested.

"As much as I grew up in CBS and as much as I associate that anchor chair with Walter Cronkite and the history of broadcasting, I have never been so happy as I have working the last four-plus years at Fox. I suspect I've had a much better last couple of years than Katie Couric."

Mike Wallace, the semi-retired 60 Minutes correspondent, underwent triple-bypass heart surgery over the weekend at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.

The 89-year-old Wallace, the oldest of the 60 Minutes correspondents, is recovering nicely, according to a CBS News spokesperson. The spokesperson added that the Correspondent Emeritus was already taking his first steps just two days after undergoing the procedure. Man, this guy is tough! It is unknown at this time if the surgery was planned or done after a checkup revealed an issue.

(S05E18) And so ends a short, inconsistent, Family Guy season. I don't know if we should chalk it up to Seth MacFarlane being spread too thin with American Dad and The Winner to watch over, or just the show coming up on 100 episodes. Something just wasn't quite right at Family Guy HQ this season though.

Just after Mike Wallace "retired", he re-signed with CBS as a correspondent emeritus. But he told reporters that "there's an understanding that I'm not going to be getting on airplanes and flying all over the world, but there are going to be certain important interviews I will do for 60 Minutes."

Well, it looks like he was right about everything except the flying part; on Tuesday, Wallace went to Tehran to interview Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which will be broadcast on the venerable newsmagazine this Sunday. This interview is one of the few that Ahmadinejad has granted to a Western journalist, and, as one would expect, he criticizes President Bush and his administration's dealings with the country, among other topics. It seems like evil despots like to talk to Mike, since he's spoken to Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollah Khomeini in the past.

[via Mediabistro]

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.

Look, we know that the NY Post's Page Six has been having some credibility problems lately, but when they publish a juicy TV-related item, it's really hard for us at TVS to ignore them. So, we present Richard Johnson and company's speculation and gossip as-is (OK, sometimes we add some semi-snarky editorial commentary) and let the readers decide.

So here's today's interesting item: NBC is supposedly offering the now-retired Mike Wallace the opportunity to do "a bit of everything" at the network. Even though Wallace's rep denies the report, the Page Sixers speculate that it'll take a lot to get the 88 year-old to move, since he's very loyal to his longtime employers. Take the rumor for what it's worth, and discuss...

Last week, dear brother Joel (really, he's my brother, except I'm prettier) asked you, the beautiful TV Squad readers, if Meredith Vieira could be taken seriously as both the host of both Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Today. Some of you said there was no problem with Vieira's credibility; others said it should be one or the other.

Well, folks, lovely Meredith is not the first person to do double-duty as both a game show host and a news personality. As Joel stated in his post, Joe Garagiola hosted and was a panelist on a number of game shows while on Today. However, he is a recent example. Truth be known, during the early days of television news people regularly double-dipped between one format and another without a complaint.

 

Venerable newsman Mike Wallace has donated papers from his forty-year career at CBS News to his alma mater, the University of Michigan. Of course, when I say "papers" I'm talking about fifty file cabinet drawers filled with notes, interviews, photos, and etc. When I was in college and dabbling in journalism I would have been utterly thrilled by something like this. It's not many J-schools that are able to offer such an intimate look into the mind of a famous journalist. Of course, I'm also reminded of the time I went to hear Carl Bernstein give a speech and the college kids next to me just played games on their mobile phones the whole time. I'm hoping the students at the U of M have a better appreciation of what they're being given.