NEW YORK — At age 83, Dan Rather is starting over.

The veteran broadcaster has quietly shut down the “Dan Rather Reports” newsmagazine he’d been making since leaving CBS News a decade ago and opened an independent production company, with seed money from AXS-TV founder Mark Cuban in exchange for a series of interviews with entertainers. His “News & Guts” firm is even working on a scripted fiction series.

Rather has also signed on for reporting and analysis at the website Mashable, where his story urging people not to get too wound up about the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign appeared this week.

Retirement? Not an option.

“I love to work,” Rather said. Rather moves more slowly and speaks more softly than during his days as chief CBS News anchor. A piece of paper with two of Cuban’s email addresses sits prominently on his desk; the Internet entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner has been Rather’s patron in his post-CBS years.

Although widely unseen, Rather’s newsmagazine took on tough topics like underage prostitution, flaws in electronic voting, floating garbage dumps at sea and temporary housing that made many hurricane victims sick.

AXS-TV, formerly HDNet, is available in less than half of the nation’s TV homes. While far more than when Rather started, the audience is a fraction of CBS’ “60 Minutes,” where Rather once figured to spend his last working years.

The switch to the music-focused AXS-TV meant the newsmagazine was out of place.

Rather’s exit from CBS was memorably ugly, stemming from his participation in a discredited 2004 story about President George W. Bush’s military service.


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