R.I.P. Newton Minow

Paul MatzkoFormer FCC Chairman Newton Minow died a  few days ago and outlets dug deep into their archives to dust off their pre‐​written obits for the 97‐​year‐​old who lived a full and eventful life. I had the opportunity to be on a panel with Minow back in 2021, which was a  somewhat surreal experience given how few of the people that I covered in mybook on broadcasting in the 1960s are still around. I  have a few thoughts about his legacy to share with you.Let ’s start with a positive note. Minow often had solid foresight. For instance, he was right when hetold JFK that launching the first telecom satellite in 1962 was a  bigger deal than landing a man on the moon. We’ve since sent twelve men to the moon and might eventually sendmore. But in terms of the effects on our everyday lives, manned moon missions pale in comparison to the 11,139 satellite launches over the same time period (and the prospect of tens of thousandsmore in the near term).But that ’s not what Minow is generally remembered for, although the fact that he is remembered at all is remarkable given how few FCC commissioners that even relatively well‐​informed members of the public are familiar with. Minow’s legacy is inextricably linked with the onlyspeech in the history of the FCC that managed to worm its way into the public consciousness, when in 1961 he declared that television was a “vast wasteland” full of “blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder,” w...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs