The Vast Wasteland

I was a TV child of the '50s and '60s. I always  thought the quote that someone made of calling TV a "vast wasteland" was made by the New York Times TV critic Jack Gould. But I guess I was just confusing Gould's reporting on Alan Minow's famous speech as a newly installed F.C.C. Commissioner in 1961 in front of 2,000 TV executives at a luncheon in Washington when he said that TV was basically televised junk food. He didn't say it had no redeeming social value, but he certainly meant that.

Ouch. Mr. Minow's description of TV was brutal, and if only simulated intercourse were added to include some TV shows of today, his list of supposed inanities and indignities would still apply, at least according to Mr. Minow. Not a fan doesn't begin to describe his feelings..

Mr. Minow challenged the executives to spend a day watching TV. He then told them:

"Stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet or a rating book to distract you, and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off, [Early TV wasn't broadcast 24 hours. Stations generally left the airwaves at midnight, while a scary 'test pattern' appeared and the national anthem played.] I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

"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 endless commercials—many screaming cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom. If you think I exaggerate, try it."

He never claimed to have been misquoted.

But what did he leave out? Sports, of which there was little televised sports in early television, certainly nothing to compete with the extravaganza smorgasbord of today.

I once read that the Hollywood producer Darryl F. Zanuck predicted that his obituary would start with his name, followed by a comma, and then note he was the producer for the movie Gone With the Wind. The 1939 movie of course was no small achievement, and still gets views today. It makes a lot of "best" lists.

And just as Zanuck knew what the first thing people were going to remember him by, Alan Minow always knew his "vast wasteland" comments were going to stay with him forever.

Mr. Minow was lawyer from Wisconsin who found work after law school working for the Adlai Stevenson presidential campaigns in 1952 and 1956.

Stevenson, likewise was from the Midwest, Illinois, and had he reputation of being an "egghead," an intellectual, who of course found it hard  to defeat the WW II Supreme Allied Commander who helped to defeat the Nazis, Dwight D. Eisenhower, in the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections.

Mr. Minow was of course promptly set upon for being an elitist after his remarks. But, as the Robert McFadden's NYT obituary does note Mr. Minow's achievements didn't begin and end with his speech. He was hugely responsible for satellite communications, founding Comsat after telling  President Kennedy that satellite communication was more important than lunar exploration. And of course he was right. You can go to the moon and get back, but now you can view European soccer games until they're coming out of your ears.

Soon after his speech the obituary notes there were some changes in content to TV shows. There was greater emphasis on using TV to teach children. Newscast got more serious.

Perhaps around the same time after the speech I remember reading in the NYT Sunday Magazine section some British guy who was fairly lambasting American TV as filled with shows about fathers with no wives.

I can't remember enough details to launch a digital search, but the critic pointed out American families didn't seem to have mothers. There was of course My Three Sons, where Mr. Douglas played by Fred MacMurray was raising three sons. There was Lorne Green on horseback at the Ponderosa ranch in Virginia City, Nevada raising three sons. There was Bachelor Father, and as the name implied, John Forsythe didn't have a wife as he was raising a daughter. The Governor and J.J. starred Julie Sommars as a young adult daughter of a governor played by James Callahan.

But there were really more shows that did feature a married couple with children: The Donna Reed Show, I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, The Danny Thomas Show, and likely more that I can't remember.

Mr. Minow wasn't the F.C.C. commissioner long, and that's understandable since JFK who appointed him didn't get to live in office too long.

Aside from the providing the impetus behind creating satellite broadcasting, Mr. Minow joined a Chicago law firm after leaving the F.C.C. and an executive position with the Encyclopaedia Britannica,  At the law firm he recruited Barack Obama as a summer associate. It was the law firm where Barack met a woman named Michelle Robinson, who of course became his wife and the First Lady. 

Think of that. Perhaps world history wouldn't be the same if Mr. Minow hadn't brought Barack Obama on board for summer job.

And it turns out Mr. Minow pushed for the creation of hte1960 presidential debates when it was successfully lobbied that equal broadcast time didn't have to be granted to fringe candidates.

The 1960 TV presidential debates between John Kennedy and the vice president Richard Nixon, are still written about. I remember watching them in a dingy apartment on East 20th Street in Manhattan with my father on a black and white TV with rabbit ears that delivered a grainy reception. My social studies made it an assignment to watch the debates. I reported that the two men were "very serious about the whole thing." I got red marked comments about my lack of clarity and seriousness. Hey, teach, I was 11.

The 1960 election became the first quadrennial book for Theodore H. White who wrote The Making of the President. What I didn't know until I read the obit was that there were no presidential debates in 1964, 1968 and 1972.

And aside from all the knowledge I gained by reading an obit, I learned what probably no one who ever watched Gilligan's Island knew: The ship-wrecked boat that couldn't make it through a Three Hour Tour was named the S. S. Minnow, after Mr. Alan Minow.

Not that's justice.

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