NEW YORK - In mid-December, the CBS News president, Andrew Heyward, will give a small 80th birthday party for Don Hewitt, the creator and executive producer of 60 Minutes.

Andy Rooney, 83, will be there. So will Mike Wallace, 84, Morley Safer, 71, and the rest of the 60 Minutes correspondents team. They will celebrate Hewitt's 60-year career, which includes his key role in the first televised presidential debate in 1960.

All the while, the celebrants will do their best to ignore the elephant in the room: Whether he likes it or not, CBS could make this his last season in charge of 60 Minutes.

Hewitt likes to say that he would die at his desk before relinquishing his position, and that he really means it. But CBS executives are insisting that he prepare to step aside. Seeking to put new zest in the venerable program, they want to replace him, most probably with the 47-year-old Jeffrey Fager, a former Hewitt protege and the producer of 60 Minutes II.

The network's plans to replace Hewitt - whom many consider the most successful news producer in the history of television - have become a touchy, behind-the-scenes drama that executives talk about in hushed tones.

Hewitt has shown no interest in cooperating with succession plans, potentially forcing CBS' hand. By giving the nudge to one of the news division's founding fathers, CBS could risk an ugly, public rift with a broadcast legend.

But to put off a succession plan, executives say, is to risk the future of a vitally important franchise and to jeopardize a crucial economic support beam for CBS News.

The fact is, 60 Minutes is showing its age. Its average audience of about 14 million people is a million smaller than it was this time last year, when it was a million smaller than the year before. It still makes an estimated profit upward of $20 million a year - a fair percentage of CBS News' overall earnings - but it used to earn much more.

Hewitt says his contract requires CBS to decide by the end of February whether this will be his last season. He says he is still at the top of his game, has at least a couple of good years in him and will not let go without a fight.

"I make the assumption that I will be producing this broadcast next year," he said during a recent interview at his office on West 57th Street overlooking the Hudson River. "If I'm wrong, and I'll be surprised if I am, I ain't going off in the sunset."