50th Anniversary of Newton Minow's "Vast Wasteland" Speech

You can read the text at American Rhetoric: Top 100 Speeches. Newton Minow (then chairman of the FCC) delivered his speech, entitled Television and the Public Interest, to the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters on 9 May 1961. Minow was a new appointee of JFK, part of what was known as "The New Frontier", and was expected to exercise a sweeping crackdown on the excesses of the television industry of the day. The broadcasters were right to be concerned.

"But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland."

At one point, Minow quoted Florida Governor LeRoy Collins:

Broadcasting, to serve the public interest, must have a soul and a conscience, a burning desire to excel, as well as to sell; the urge to build the character, citizenship, and intellectual stature of people, as well as to expand the gross national product. ...By no means do I imply that broadcasters disregard the public interest. ...But a much better job can be done, and should be done.

Addressing the powerful, wealthy, and influential broadcasters, he said:

Gentlemen, your trust accounting with your beneficiaries is long overdue. Never have so few owed so much to so many.

I believe in the people's good sense and good taste, and I am not convinced that the people's taste is as low as some of you assume.

He quotes from the Television Code:

Television and all who participate in it are jointly accountable to the American public for respect for the special needs of children, for community responsibility, for the advancement of education and culture, for the acceptability of the program materials chosen, for decency and decorum in production, and for propriety in advertising. This responsibility cannot be discharged by any given group of programs, but can be discharged only through the highest standards of respect for the American home, applied to every moment of every program presented by television.

Program materials should enlarge the horizons of the viewer, provide him with wholesome entertainment, afford helpful stimulation, and remind him of the responsibilities which the citizen has towards his society.

Here's another quote from Minow:

We need imagination in programming, not sterility; creativity, not imitation; experimentation, not conformity; excellence, not mediocrity. Television is filled with creative, imaginative people. You must strive to set them free.