Minow and the "Wasteland": Time, Manner, and Place
2003; Volume: 55; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2376-4457
Autores Tópico(s)Media Studies and Communication
ResumoA chance to reflect on Newton Minow's speech brings three things to mind: the speech itself; the manner of speech-giving by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairs and commissioners; and a place later headed by the gentleman who gave the oration, and whose contribution to Washington, D.C. communications policymaking in that later role far exceeded his 1961 address. As to the speech, (1) its fame derives from a famous question and answer. Compare it to a nearly contemporaneous event in TV annals: Charles van Doren answering a prize-winning question on the NBC quiz show 21. Young Mr. van Doren gave correct, but rigged, answers to the questions asked. He knew his presentation was counterfeit--motivated by greed, a desire for fame, self-destruction, and who knows what else. Minow, already a minor celebrity in Washington, D.C. for being named FCC Chairman by President John Kennedy at a young age, gave a truthful but erroneous answer to a self-directed question, reflecting his beliefs about how to improve the quality of American programming. Thus, we have one man who became infamous for giving the fight answer on TV. The other became famous for giving the wrong one about TV. Was there such a vast wasteland? Wasteland is defined as a place, era, or aspect of life regarded as humanistically, spiritually, or culturally barren. (2) What did the 1960-61 television season include, on which Minow based his glue-yourself-to-the-tube challenge? Programming included Macbeth on the Hallmark Hall of Fame, starring Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson; Astaire Time, one of several Fred Astaire specials aired in the early 1960s; and 39-week series such as The Jack Benny Show; Twilight Zone; Naked City; The Defenders; The Ernie Kovacs Show; Car 54, Where Are You?; and The Dick Van Dyke Show. The TV season did not have as much highbrow material as Minow would have liked, but it was hardly a wasteland. (3) Of course, there were other crummy shows on TV then, long forgotten except by TV historians; daytime TV was filled with soap operas and game shows. Local news programs relied more on announcers than journalists, and there was only film to report a story outside of the studio. Sports telecasts lacked the electronic wizardry that we now come to expect with every pitch of the baseball or hoopshot. But, in terms of making a contribution to the television arts and sciences, the wasteland was a productive place. It was easier for programmers to succeed then. With three networks dominating the television audience, it was hard not to generate a respectable share; audience ratings for the third-place network (usually ABC) would be great victories today. Though the period is remembered for promoting the Ozzie and Harriet nuclear family, other, more subversive, arrangements were depicted. Consider a show like Car 54, one of the great screwball TV shows of all time. It featured Francis Muldoon (Fred Gwynne, who later portrayed Herman Munster), a grown son living with his mother; and Gunther Toody (Joe E. Ross), a high-energy, squat patrolman living with a neurotic wife, Lucille (Beatrice Pons), who took to screaming out the window when her husband upset her. The early 1960s were not exactly the high point of the fine arts that Minow thought absent from TV. The boom in art museum attendance would be twenty years away (despite the effects of more and more TV). Classical music, then as now, was mostly being written, if at all, by European composers. It is also not clear that advertiser-supported television would have backed lightly viewed, highbrow programming. Even when noncommercial public television came along, it soon found it needed to appeal to more than culture vultures. PBS, which did not rely on advertiser support (for the most part), never launched Opera of the Week or produced all of Shakespeare's plays--presumably the sort of highbrow presentations Minow had in mind. …
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