The ‘vast wasteland,’ reconsidered — Harvard Gazette

Fifty years ago, FCC Chairman Newton Minow famously shocked the nascent television industry out of complacency, calling American television a “vast wasteland.” On Sept. 12, he joined an all-star lineup at Harvard Law School to discuss the problems and potential of the vaster wasteland that now includes elements of the Internet.

The ‘vast wasteland,’ reconsidered — Harvard Gazette It’s hard to envision, in the era of aggressive 24-hour political coverage, a government official telling television broadcasters what to do. But on May 9, 1961, at a meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters , new Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow did just that. “When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines, or newspapers — nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse,” Minow told his audience. He challenged the broadcasters to sit in front of their television

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• American Rhetoric: Newton Minow -- Address to the National Association of Broadcasters (Television and the Public Interest)americanrhetoric.com
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• Everything Is Televisionderekthompson.org
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• Bringing Back the Fairness Doctrine Won’t Cure What Ails Modern Mediazocalopublicsquare.org
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