Talk about your awkward moments: 48 Hours executive producer Susan Zirinsky was forced to call Dan Rather to tell him he wasn't invited to last week's twentieth-anniversary party for 48 Hours:

The original anchor of 48 Hours — who, along with [Sir Howard] Stringer, got the show off the ground in 1986 with a highly rated pilot, "48 Hours on Crack Street," and pushed the network suits to put it on the weekly schedule — wasn't invited. In an awkward phone call before the celebration, Zirinsky explained to Rather that he couldn’t come under the circumstances.

Those circumstances, of course, involve Rather's $70 million lawsuit against CBS. In a statement, Rather simply told New York's Lloyd Grove that "I'm very proud of the people who work at 48 Hours."