‘Wasteland’ Revisited

You may be old enough to remember the “vast wasteland” moniker that JFK’s Federal Communications Commission Chairman, Newton Minow, applied to broadcast TV’s handful of channels in the early 1960s. Well, a new generation of Minow has come up with a label for the new generation of multiplatform video. “Toxic Swamp.”

Newton’s daughter, Nell Minow, a film critic who provides viewing advice for mothers and children at moviemom.com, was among those calling on Congress and the FCC to nip “content creep” in the bud by turning over the TV content ratings to health experts and others, rather than having them determined by an industry which has a vested interest in what those ratings are. Turning over ratings oversight to third parties would put the industry-led Parental Guidelines Oversight Monitoring Board out of business. The board’s chair, by the way, is former-FCC Chairman Michael Powell, currently the president of NCTA-The Internet & Television Association.