Doc Edward Morbius ⭕<p><strong>Newton N. Minow has died.</strong></p><blockquote><p>Newton N. Minow, who as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission in the early 1960s famously decried the state of American television as a "vast wasteland," died Saturday at age 97.</p><p>Minow, appointed to head the FCC by President John F. Kennedy, stayed in the post for just two years. Even so, his stinging critique of television programming, delivered during a speech before the National Association of Broadcasters, reverberated long after he had left the job....</p></blockquote><p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/05/06/1174552038/fcc-newton-minow-dead" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">npr.org/2023/05/06/1174552038/</span><span class="invisible">fcc-newton-minow-dead</span></a></p><p>A consequence of my rather severe news-restriction diet is that I missed news of Minow's death about a week ago. I've been revisiting his "Vast Wasteland" speech (<a href="https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/newtonminow.htm" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">americanrhetoric.com/speeches/</span><span class="invisible">newtonminow.htm</span></a>) frequently in recent years. It pairs well with Edward R. Murrow's "Lights and Wires in a Box" (<a href="https://www.rtdna.org/murrows-famous-wires-and-lights-in-a-box" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">rtdna.org/murrows-famous-wires</span><span class="invisible">-and-lights-in-a-box</span></a>), and Jerry Mander's <em>Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television</em> (<a href="https://archive.org/details/fourargumentsfor00mand_0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">archive.org/details/fourargume</span><span class="invisible">ntsfor00mand_0</span></a>).</p><p><a href="https://toot.cat/tags/Obituary" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Obituary</span></a> <a href="https://toot.cat/tags/NewtMinow" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>NewtMinow</span></a> <a href="https://toot.cat/tags/NewtonNMinow" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>NewtonNMinow</span></a> <a href="https://toot.cat/tags/TheMinowIsLost" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>TheMinowIsLost</span></a> <a href="https://toot.cat/tags/VastWasteland" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>VastWasteland</span></a> <a href="https://toot.cat/tags/Television" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Television</span></a> <a href="https://toot.cat/tags/media" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>media</span></a> <a href="https://toot.cat/tags/ItsMinowNotMinnowDamnit" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ItsMinowNotMinnowDamnit</span></a></p><p><strong>Edit:</strong> s/minnow/minow/</p>