Newt Minow's death: Former FCC chief, public TV advocate, Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Newton Minow dies aged 97 in Chicago

CHICAGO — Newton N. Minow, who as head of the Federal Communications Commission in the early 1960s famously declared network television “a vast wasteland,” died Saturday. He is 97 years old.

Minow, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, died Saturday at home, surrounded by loved ones, said her daughter, Nell Minow.

“He wants to be home,” she told The Associated Press. “He had a good life.”

Although Minow remained in the FCC post for only two years, he left a permanent stamp on the broadcast industry through government moves to encourage satellite communications, the passage of laws mandating UHF reception on TV and his outspoken advocacy for quality on television.

“My belief is the belief that this country needs and can support many television voices – and the more voices we hear, the better, the richer, the freer we are,” Minow once said. “After all, the airways belong to the people.”

Minow was appointed head of the FCC by President John F. Kennedy in early 1961. He first came to know the Kennedys in the 1950s as an aide to Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee for president in 1952 and 1956.

Minow gave his famous challenge to TV executives on May 9, 1961, in an address to the National Association of Broadcasters, urging them to sit down and watch their station for a full day, “without books, magazines, newspapers, profit-and-loss or ranking book to distract you.”

“I can assure you that you will be observing the vast desert,” he told them. “You'll see a procession of game shows, family comedy formulas that are truly amazing, blood and thunder, chaos, violence, gore, murder, bad guy Western, good guy West, private eye, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, non-stop, commercials – lots of yelling, cajoling and alluding.”

As he spoke, those three networks were nearly all that most viewers would have to choose from. Pay television is just in the planning stages, PBS and “Sesame Street” are a few years away, and HBO and niche channels like Animal Planet are far in the future.

The speech caused a sensation. “Big vacant land” becomes an interesting phrase. Jimmy Durante opened the NBC special by saying, “The next hour will be dedicated to improving television. … At least, Newt, we're trying.”

Minow became the first government official to receive the George Foster Peabody award for excellence in broadcasting. The New York Times critic Jack Gould (hisself a Peabody winner) wrote, “There's finally a man in Washington who proposes to champion the public interest in TV matters and doesn't hesitate to ruffle the industry's most august feathers. Tonight. some broadcasters have tried to find dark explanations for Mr Minow's behavior. In this case the viewers might be able to help a little; Mr Minow is watching television.”

CBS president Frank Stanton strongly disagreed, calling Minow's comments a “sensationalized and oversimplified approach” that could lead to reforms that go wrong “on the grounds that any change is a change for the better.”

To criticism of his speech, Minow said he was not in favor of censorship, preferring insistence and measures to expand public choice. But he also said the broadcasting license was an “incredible gift” from the government which brings responsibility to the public.

His daughter, Nell Minow, told The Associated Press in 2011 that her father loved television and hoped he would be remembered for championing the public interest in television programming, not just a few words in his wider speech.

“His No. 1 goal is to give people a choice,” he said.

Among the new laws during his tenure was the All-Channel Receiver Act of 1962, which required TVs to take UHF as well as VHF broadcasts, which opened up TV channels numbered above 13 for widespread viewing. Congress also passed legislation providing funding for educational television, and measures to develop communications satellites.

In a September 2006 interview on National Public Radio, Minow recalled telling Kennedy that such satellites were “more important than sending humans into space. … Communications satellites will send ideas into space, and ideas outlast humans.” .” On July 10, 1962, Minow was one of the officials to make statements on the first live trans-Atlantic television program, the AT demonstrationTelstar & T. Satellite

Children's programming is a special interest of Minow, a father of three, who told the broadcaster that some good children's shows “drown in heavy doses of cartoon, violence, and more violence. … Search your conscience and see if you can't offer more to your young beneficiaries whose future you mentor hours every day.”

Minow resigned in May 1963 to become executive vice president and general counsel of Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. in Chicago.

Nell Minow says her father was also instrumental in televising presidential debates, starting with Kennedy and Richard N. Nixon, after witnessing Stevenson's struggle to embrace new media during the 1956 presidential election.

“Minow was shocked by … the whole theatrics had to make an image on television,” said Craig Allen, a professor of mass communications at Arizona State University who wrote a 2001 book about Minow.

In 1965, Minow returned to his law practice in Chicago, and later served on the boards of PBS, CBS Inc. and advertising company Foote Cone. & Belding Communications Inc. He is director of the Annenberg Washington Program in Communication Policy Studies at Northwestern University.

He also got Barack Obama a summer job at a law firm, where the future president met his wife, Michelle Robinson. Minow was also one of Obama's earliest supporters when the then-Illinois senator considered running for president, Nell Minow said.

Television is one of the most important advances of our century “but, as a nation, we pay no attention to it,” Minow said in a 1991 Associated Press interview.

He continued to push for reforms such as free airtime for political ads and higher quality programming while praising advances in diversity on US television.

“In 1961, I was worried that my children would not benefit much from television. But in 1991 I was worried that my children and grandchildren would be harmed by it,” he said.

___

Former Associated Press writer Polly Anderson in New York contributed to this story.