Revisiting the Vast Wasteland

On May 9, 1961, Newton N. Minow gave his first public address as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC" or "Commission"). (1) Little was known at that time about the new Chairman, other than that he was the youngest person ever to hold the job and that he was not part of the Washington establishment. It was widely suspected that President John F. Kennedy had chosen the young Chicago lawyer to help clean house at the Commission and in the broadcast industry, both of which were still reeling from the payola and quiz show scandals of the 1950s. It might therefore be expected that the chosen audience for his maiden speech--the National Association of Broadcasters ("NAB")--was somewhat wary about what they might hear. Nothing, however, could have prepared them for what Minow had to say. The industry scandals of the past he dismissed with a single sentence. "I have confidence in your health," Minow said, turning to the reason he had come to the NAB annual convention that day, "[b]ut not in your product." "Your industry possesses the most powerful voice in America.... When television is good, nothing--not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers--nothing is better. "But when television is bad," Minow continued, "nothing is worse." With the industry leadership squarely in his sights, Minow challenged his audience: "I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you--and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off." "You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western badmen, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons." Minow continued: "And, endlessly, commercials--many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom." "I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland." The speech struck a nerve in American society. Although the industry was shocked and outraged, the public's response was, in the words of communications scholar Mary Ann Watson, "quick, abundant, and overwhelmingly positive." (2) Thousands of letters flooded into the Chairman's office, and overnight, Minow became a celebrity. "By the end of his first year on the job," Watson writes, "Minow made more radio and TV appearances than any other member of the Kennedy administration, except the President himself." (3) Minow was named "top newsmaker" in a 1961 Associated Press poll. With that one speech, Minow altered the American vocabulary forever. His NAB address is among the most quoted of all twentieth-century speeches, and has been reprinted again and again in newspapers and anthologies. The phrase "vast wasteland" has become an icon of American culture, memorialized in hundreds of editorial cartoons, listed in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, quoted in popular fiction, and featured as the answer to questions in Jeopardy!, Trivial Pursuit, and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. "When I die," Minow is fond of saying, "my wife and three daughters will inscribe on my tombstone--'On to a vaster wasteland.'" With these words Minow also launched a national debate that still continues today about the quality of video programming and the extent to which it meets the needs of the public. The debate consumed the public, as well as industry executives, government officials, and communications scholars. Minow's famous (some would say infamous) words also marked the beginning of more than forty years--and still counting--of challenging broadcasters and other industry and government officials to improve television programming. Minow had come to the Commission at the age of thirty-five from private law practice in Chicago. …