He played a key behind-the-scenes role in the Carnegie Commission report that led to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and federal funding.
Can one imagine the federal government funding public broadcasting today? Not me. Lindsay Graham, that paragon of mediocrity, wouldn’t allow it. Can one imagine there not being public broadcasting today? I shudder at the possibility.
His efforts came in the wake of a speech in 1961 by Newton N. Minow, the newly named Federal Communications Commission chairman, to a roomful of 2,000 television executives in Washington, in which he dismissed their product as a “vast wasteland.”
Big difference: today we pay for that drek.
In a typical day of broadcasting, Mr. Minow said, “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.”
How little has changed.