Newton N. Minow

Newton Norman Minow (January 17, 1926 – May 6, 2023) was an American attorney who served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Born to a Jewish family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1926, Minow served in World War II from 1944 to 1946 and attained the rank of a sergeant in the U.S. Army.

After the war, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1949 from Northwestern University and a Juris Doctor degree in 1950 from Northwestern University School of Law.

After graduating from law school, Minow worked for the law firm of Mayer, Brown & Platt (1950–1951 and 1953–1955) before becoming a law clerk to Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson of the U.S. Supreme Court (1951–1952).

He later became assistant counsel to Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson (1952–1953), worked for Stevenson's two presidential campaigns (1952 and 1956), and then was a partner in the law firm, Stevenson, Rifkind & Wirtz (1955–1961).

Minow campaigned for President John F. Kennedy prior to the 1960 U.S. presidential election.

Minow became one of the best-known and respected—if sometimes controversial—political figures of the early 1960s because of his criticism of commercial television.

He is famous for his 1961 speech referring to television as a "vast wasteland".

In 1961 he was appointed by President Kennedy to be one of seven commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as well as its chairman.

Reportedly, Robert F. Kennedy and Minow frequently talked at length about the increasing importance of television in the lives of their children when they worked together on the presidential campaign of Adlai E. Stevenson.

Thereafter, it came as little surprise that after the election of John F. Kennedy Minow eagerly pursued the position of FCC chairman.

Some observers nevertheless considered it unusual given his lack of experience with the media industry and with communication law.

He served as chairman from March 2, 1961, through June 1, 1963.

In a speech given to the National Association of Broadcasters convention on May 9, 1961, he was extremely critical of television broadcasters for not doing more, in Minow's view, to serve the public interest.

His phrase "vast wasteland" is remembered years after the speech in which he said:

"When television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there for a day without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland."

While some applauded his "vast wasteland" assault on commercial television as a welcome criticism of excessive violence and frivolity, others criticized it as an elitist, snobbish attack on programming that many viewers enjoyed as well as a government intrusion into private enterprise.

The speech came 50 years after he referred to television as a "vast wasteland" on May 9, 1961.

The day after the 1961 speech, the New York Times headline read "F.C.C. Head Bids TV Men Reform 'Vast Wasteland'—Minow Charges Failure in Public Duty—Threatens to Use License Power".

Minow did foster two significant initiatives that altered the landscape of American television.

The first was the All-Channel Receiver Act (ACRA) of 1961, which mandated UHF reception capability for all television receivers sold in the United States.

This legislation sparked an increase in the number of television stations and helped launch nonprofit educational television stations (now PBS) throughout the country.

Minow said that his greatest contribution was persuading U. S. Congress to pass legislation clearing the way for communications satellites.

Minow recounted, "When I toured the space program with [John F.] Kennedy, he was surprised to see me".

Minow told Kennedy that "communications satellites will be much more important than sending man into space, because they will send ideas into space. Ideas last longer than men."

During his two years in office, it was estimated that, other than the president, Minow generated more column inches of news coverage than any other federal official.

He also promoted what ultimately became the International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium (Intelsat).

This organization controlled satellite communications for many years.

Minow's papers from his tenure at the FCC are archived at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, an organization co-sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Quote from a speech to the Association of American Law Schools:

The S.S. Minnow of the 1964–67 television show Gilligan's Island was reputedly sarcastically named after him to express displeasure with his assessment of the quality of television.

He served in the China Burma India Theater with the 835th Signal Service Battalion headquartered in New Delhi, India.

While still maintaining a law practice, Minow served as the Honorary Consul General of Singapore in Chicago, beginning in 2001.

Minow was active in Democratic Party politics.

He was an attorney in private practice concerning telecommunications law and was active in many nonprofit, civic, and educational institutions.

In a 2011 speech at Harvard, Minow said that he could never have anticipated the impact of television.

He still felt that news is the most important public service, but that television continued to fall short in that area.

"Too much deals with covering controversy, crimes, fires, and not enough with the country's great issues" he said.

He also said that presidential campaigns are obsessed with the trivial.

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 by Barack Obama, whom he had known since the start of Obama's legal career.