Does Minow Still Think TV Is a 'Vast Wasteland'?

Fifty years after calling television "a vast wasteland", what does former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow think of TV now? "It's vaster, certainly," but it also gives viewers a "wider range of choice. That was the main thing I tried to do. At the time I was at the FCC there were two-and-a-half commercial television networks, there was no public television, no satellite. The choice was extremely narrow. Many cities had only one television station, some had two, a few had three, New York and Los Angeles had seven. But that was it. The most constructive thing the FCC could do was to expand choice. And in that we certainly succeeded." Minow said one of the downsides of so many choices on TV today is that "we've lost the common shared experience. I think it's increased the polarization of opinion. And now you have news appealing to particular ideologies, the left and the right, whereas before it was more in the middle. So that's a downside. On the other hand, the possibility that people can find something of their particular interest on television is much greater than it was before."