TIME Magazine, May 19, 1961, p. 53:
Television: "The People Own the Air"
The toughest TV critic yet to appear in the U.S. last week dared the station and network operators and owners to sit down in front of their sets from sign-on to sign-off. They would see, he told them, "a vast wasteland-- 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, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials-- many screaming, cajoling and offending. And, most of all, boredom."
The critic was Newton N. Minow, 35, new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and his audience was the National Association of Broadcasters' convention in Washington. Accustomed to a mild FCC that never interfered with programing, the TV owners and operators were more deeply shaken by Minow's blast than they had been by the quiz show scandals or anything else in TV history.
Debts to Be Paid. Lawyer Minow refused to accept the broadcaster's argument that they are only giving the public what it wants... Ratings are at best only "an indication of how many people saw what you gave them... I am not convinced that the people's taste is as low as some of you assume..."
Even if "people would more often prefer to be entertained than stimulated of informed," said Minow, "your obligations are not satisfied if you look only to popularity... It is not enough to cater to a nation's whims-- you must also serve the nation's needs. The people own the air... For every hour that the people give you, you owe them something. I intend to see that your debt is paid with service..."
How to Bridge the Gap. While promising that there would be no censorship, Minow announced that the FCC will no longer automatically renew the licenses of stations that insist on lowest-common-denominator programing. In the future, the agency will hold public hearings on stations whose performance has not measured up to their promise to offer a diversified output. "For those few of you who really believe that the public interest is merely what interests the public," said Minow, "I hope these hearings will arouse no little interest."
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