Newton N. Minow, who, as President John F. Kennedy’s new FCC chairman in 1961, sent shockwaves through an industry and struck a chord in a nation addicted to banality and chaos by calling American television “a vast wasteland” , died Saturday at his home in Chicago. He turned 97.
His daughter Nell Minow said the cause was a heart attack.
On May 9, 1961, nearly four months after President Kennedy called on Americans to renew their commitment to freedom around the world, Mr. Minow, a bespectacled bureaucrat who had recently been put in charge of the Federal Communications Commission, stood up for 2,000 broadcasts . executives over lunch in Washington and invited them to spend the day watching television.
“Stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you, and keep your eyes on that set until the station signs,” Mr. Minow said. “I can assure you that you will be observing a vast wasteland.”
The audience sat stunned as he continued:
“You see a parade of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private detectives, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And endless commercials – many screaming, flattering and insulting. And above all boredom.”
