Former FCC chairman Newton Minow, who coined the expression that network television was a “vast wasteland,” died on May 6 at his home in Chicago. He was 97.
Newton Minow was at the head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission when on May 9, 1961, in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, he told them to watch their stations for a full day, “without a book, a magazine, a newspaper, a profit-and-loss statement, or a rating book to distract you… I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland. You will see a procession of game shows … formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western bad men, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons.”
Minow served as FCC chairman from March 1961 to June 1963.
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