CBS 60 Minutes, the most successful television broadcast program in history, this Sunday (Oct. 28) will feature a colorful and insightful profile on Shahid Khan, a native of Pakistan whose success in the automotive supply industry helped bring true another chapter to his American Dream – ownership of a team in the National Football League.
Khan, owner of Illinois-based automotive parts supplier Flex-N-Gate Corporation, was approved in December 2011 as the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Life hasn't been the same since for Khan, whose zest for American football, business and life has captured the imagination of Jacksonville and followers of the NFL throughout the world.
Correspondent Byron Pitts and his 60 Minutes team (led by producer Clem Taylor and associate producer Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson) spent days with Khan on numerous occasions throughout 2012 in an exclusive effort to bring to life this unlikely and inspirational story, which at times has been marked equally by adversity and triumph. Highlights of the reporting by 60 Minutes include:
• Khan's first visit back as an NFL owner to his native land of Lahore, Pakistan, where he visits his mom and brother in the same family home of his childhood, as well as the local cricket stadium and various other locales of significance.
• Time spent in Champaign-Urbana, the Illinois community that is home to Khan's beloved University of Illinois and the world headquarters of Flex-N-Gate, the 14th largest North American automotive supplier which employs nearly 13,000 people at 48 manufacturing and nine product development and engineering facilities throughout Canada, the United States, Mexico, Argentina and Spain.
• Khan with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and local leaders on the day the Jaguars announced a commitment to play four home games in London starting next season to grow the profile of the team and the Jacksonville business and tourism communities.
• Khan's milestone first regular season home game as an NFL owner, with footage of meet-and-greets with
tailgating fans and guests in his suite during the game.
The television segment will be posted next week at 60Minutes.com, while web-only content and behind-the-scenes video highlighting the production of the Khan report will be available at 60MinutesOvertime.com.
CBS 60 Minutes began its 45th season in September 2012. Offering hard-hitting investigative reports, interviews, feature segments and profiles of people in the news, the broadcast begun in 1968 is still a hit in 2012, regularly making Nielsen's Top 10. Over the 2011-12 season, 60 Minutes continued its dominance as the No. 1 news program, drawing an average of more than 13 million viewers per week – more than any other network news program and twice the audiences of its network news magazine competitors. The average audience for a 60 Minutes broadcast dwarfs the biggest audiences drawn by cable news programs.
