‘Wasteland’ Revisited

A Q&A with former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow.
Former FCC Chairman Newton Minow only served as FCC Chairman for two and a half years, but he may be the TV industry’s most famous (or infamous) regulator. That reputation is due to his “vast wasteland” speech at the 1961 National Association of Broadcasters convention in Washington. That speech, and that phrase, has remained stuck in the public consciousness—and in broadcasters’ collective craw—for more than half a century. But Minow was also instrumental in early testing of the pay-TV business and creating noncommercial television, and advocated for a nonpolitical commission, something that seems a distant memory at a time when political fissures appear to widen with every big vote at today’s FCC. And he is considered one of the founding fathers of televised political debates. A member of the board of directors of the Commission on Presidential Debates, Minow has once again plugged back into the media zeitgeist in an election year unlike any other. He has long been a driving force in the creation and refinement of televised presidential debates—those between the eventual party choices, not the current round of nominee debates that have become the center of so much media attention of late. Minow calls these initial scrums “deplorable,” though he does see promise in the town hall format.