Newton N. Minow, F.C.C. Chief Who Deemed TV a ‘Vast Wasteland,’ Dies at 97

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Newton N. Minow, who as President John F. Kennedy’s new F.C.C. chairman in 1961 sent shock waves through an industry and touched a nerve in a nation addicted to banality and mayhem by calling American television “a vast wasteland,” died on Saturday at his home in Chicago .

“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 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.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/06/business/media/newton-n-minow-dead.html
 
Cut the cable years ago and now I'm completely ad free. Had to watch hospital TV recently and was appalled by both the number of ads and by how many of them were for drugs. A wasteland indeed.
 
Cut the cable years ago and now I'm completely ad free. Had to watch hospital TV recently and was appalled by both the number of ads and by how many of them were for drugs. A wasteland indeed.

"blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder,"

Sounds like current America.
 
Living to 97 feels like torture. ......I had a grandpa that was here to 94.....he told me that it was entirely too long.
 
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