Newton Minow makes big splash with 'Vast Wasteland' speech - 50 years ago today

Fifty years ago today, the brash young chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Newton Minow, gave what would become one of the most famous speeches of the 20th century. The official title of his address was “Television and the Public Interest,” but it became known as the Vast Wasteland speech.

It was 1961. The quiz show scandal was still fresh in the public’s mind. George "Superman" Reeves was hawking Kellogg’s new Sugar Smacks. "Puffs of wheat, sugar toasted," he says, his lips audibly slippery with the cereal, "and, candy sweet." And "The Untouchables," with Robert Stack, was a hit TV show.

President Kennedy appointed a 35-year-old lawyer named Newton Minow chair of the FCC, which regulates broadcasting. On May 9 of that year, Minow told the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters, “Your industry possesses the most powerful voice in America. ... Ours has been called the jet age, the atomic age, the space age. It is also, I submit, the television age."

Minow said broadcasting had a duty to make its “voice ring with intelligence and ... leadership.” But then he challenged the audience of station owners and managers to watch their own stations for an entire day.

"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. 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. And endlessly commercials – many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom."

Today, Minow is 85, and still comes to his law office in Chicago, which boasts a photo pantheon of Democratic lions Minow knew – Humphrey, the Kennedys, Adlai Stevenson – and a big Sony flatscreen TV. I asked him why, 50 years ago, this Minow needed to make such a big splash.

He said, "Television was still fairly new, and I think that a shock was needed. There had been scandals involving the quiz shows and there had been scandals with FCC commissioners. So it needed a great change."

After the speech, Minow says some men in the audience came up to him and complained. But Edward R. Murrow called that night in support. And so did Joe Kennedy. "'Newt,' he said, 'I just talked to Jack. I told him that you gave the best speech since his inaugural.'"

Then, as now, it was fashionable to beat up on TV, on the boob tube. But broadcast historian Robert Thompson of Syracuse University says Minow was not a knee-jerk television hater.

"We call it the Vast Wasteland speech for this little chunk," he says, "but seconds before, he actually makes a list of the stuff he likes." And then, what Thompson says "was about the nicest thing anyone had ever said about television."

“When television is good, nothing – not the theater, not the magazines, not the newspapers – nothing is better."

Thompson says Minow’s speech did not bring about the wholesale reinvention of television, but Minow’s threat to withhold license renewal did help to reduce the violence and get more kids shows on the air. Thompson says Minow also boosted educational TV and got a law passed requiring manufacturers to include a UHF dial on TV sets.

Ask anyone on the street about the Vast Wasteland speech, and they probably won’t know what you’re talking about. But ask them the name of the boat on "Gilligan’s Island," the series created by Sherwood Schwartz, and that's a different matter.

Minow says Sherwood Schwartz, the series creator, "wrote to me and he said that he was insulted by the speech. And then he named the boat after me, the S.S. Minnow, and I was thrilled by it. He and I had a wonderful correspondence together before he died."

When I say I’m surprised Minow was thrilled, Minow says the public interest is also served by entertainment. "Gilligan’s Island" didn’t have sex or violence, he says, and it was good for a few laughs.