The "vast wasteland" phrase, using imagery inspired by T. S. Eliot’s 1922
poem “The Waste Land,” has also been commemorated in numerous newspaper and magazine
articles, editorials, cartoons, books, and documentaries. Minow himself had to
endure being lampooned by Hollywood producer Sherwood Schwartz, who named the
doomed ship (SS Minnow) from the television series Gilligin’s Island after him. Minow’s daughters have joked
to him that on his tombstone will be engraved the words: “On to a Vaster
Wasteland.”
Minow, who has said he expects the phrase will be included in the
first sentence of his obituary when he dies, probably could not have realized
the lasting effect of his speech, especially considering the reaction he
received from one audience member. He recalled that he was talking with LeRoyCollins, NAB president and a former governor of Florida, after finishing his
remarks when a member of the audience approached the two men and said to Minow,
“I didn’t particularly like your speech.” The man left, only to return a few
minutes later to say to Minow, “The more I thought about it, your speech was
really awful.” The man retreated, only to return for a final time to comment:
“Mr. Minow, that was the worst speech I ever heard in my whole life!” Collins
attempted to console Minow, gently putting his arm around the FCC chairman’s
shoulder and telling him, “Don’t let him upset you, Newt. That man has no mind of
his own. He just repeats everything he hears.
Although the phrase "vast wasteland" has become famous, one person's contributions is not well known. It was the work of one of the main authors of the speech--Hoosier journalist and writer John Bartlow Martin.
According
to Minow his friend Martin, who knew just how important the NAB speech would
be, volunteered to produce a draft for him. “I wouldn’t have imposed on him,”
Minow said years later. Before Minow took over the FCC, Martin recalled, the
two men “discussed the office, and I promised to help him with his speeches if
I could.” He wrote Minow in March 1961 that he expected to have some ideas to
pass along to him in a few weeks and suggested that Minow refrain from leaking
any information about what he intended to say to reporters, including Jack
Gould, a noted television critic for the New
York Times. “I suggest you store everything up until May then drop the
bomb,” Martin wrote. Minow responded by thanking Martin for his assistance and
said his staff at the FCC had “all become John Bartlow Martin fans, and the
great debate here is whether you look like Ernie Pyle or Abraham Lincoln."
To gain perspective about television’s quality, and its
effect on American society, Martin decided to spend almost an entire day,
twenty hours, watching programs. He woke up at 5:30 a.m. at his Highland Park
home, ate a hearty breakfast, tuned his family’s set to Chicago’s WNBQ Channel
5, sat down, and kept his eyes glued to the screen until the NBC affiliate
ended its broadcast day at 1:52 a.m. “The channel and the day were chosen at
random,” Martin noted.
After watching Dave Garroway on the Today program, Martin felt besieged by a seemingly endless stream
of game shows, programs that had disappeared from the airwaves for a time after
the quiz show scandals. By the end of the morning Martin had also witnessed
approximately seventy commercials advertising such products as soap,
detergents, lipstick, orange juice, salad dressing, baby food, hair cream, hair
spray, vitamins, soup, headache remedies, bleach, frozen food, appliances, and
patent medicines. “The commercials, loud and frequent and long, seemed
stupefying,” he said.
In the afternoon, after having watched television for
nine straight hours, Martin observed that, except for news broadcasts and two
brief interviews on the Today program,
“nobody on Channel 5 had discussed a single idea.” He persevered, enduring such
banal hit programs as Sing Along with Mitch and The Jack Paar Show, as
well as the violence of a show called Official
Detective, which featured several fistfights, three shootings, four
killings, and a suicide. “After Paar,” Martin laconically noted, “it was a
pleasure.”
All in all, he wrote in a draft of the article, what he had seen had
been “a vast wasteland of junk.” Obviously, Martin added, no one would normally
have watched television as he had done, just as few people would have sat down
and in one day read an entire issue, cover to cover, of a magazine such as the Post. “Nonetheless,” he said, “this is
what was sent over the airwaves by one television station, owned by a leading
network in a big city. The station is licensed by the Government to use the
people’s air; this is how it used it that day."
In writing Minow’s speech, Martin said he suggested he say to the NAB: “I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air . . . and keep your eyes glued to the set until the station goes off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland of junk.”
In addition to Martin’s contribution for his NAB speech, Minow also had assistance from Tedson Meyers, an FCC aide; Stanley Frankel, his brother-in-law and a former newspaper reporter and magazine publisher; and others. Of all the drafts he received, however, “the best one by far” came from Martin, said Minow, who noted he was a much better editor than he was a writer. Minow appreciated Martin’s work, writing him on April 17: “I cannot, cannot, cannot thank you enough. I’m deeply moved by your giving me so much of your thought and time, and the country will benefit from it—and so will I!”
Although Martin originated the “vast wasteland” phrase, it took nothing away from Minow, who, as Martin stated, also had the “courage to throw it [the phrase] in the teeth of the broadcasters and thus show the public the need for reform.”
Writing the speech did change the way Martin handled his series for the Post. Although he stuck to his lead on watching television for twenty hours, he had to change the ending of the passage that used "vast wasteland," not as his own summary of what he had seen, but instead writing, "This is what Newton N. Minow, the beleagurered new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has called 'a vast wasteland.'"
Ironically, Minow’s speech, which left many broadcasting
executives looking as if they were “refugees from an atomic blast,” reported
one magazine, received attention for all the wrong reasons and was “badly
misinterpreted,” noted Minow. “Today that speech is remembered for two
words—but not the two I intended to be remembered,” Minow later said. “The
words we tried to advance were ‘public interest.’ To me, the public interest
meant, and still means, that we should constantly ask: What can television do
for our country? For the common good? For the American people?”
Minow said he
wanted the broadcasters to know that there was a new team in town who really
cared about the public interest, and that if television failed in that area
they would find themselves in difficulty with the government. At the same time,
he added, the FCC stood ready to back television executives if they decided to
tackle controversial issues.
When
he returned home after his speech, Minow received two telephone calls. The
first came from President Kennedy’s father, Joseph, from whom the FCC chairman
expected “sharp criticism.” Instead, the senior Kennedy told Minow that he had
just finished talking to the president and had told his son that Minow’s speech
“was the best one since his [JFK’s] inaugural address on January 20th. Keep it
up; if anyone gives you any trouble, call me!”
The second call came from Edward R. Murrow, the former newsman and commentator, who had joined the Kennedy
administration as director of the U.S. Information Agency. “You gave the same
speech I gave two years ago,” Murrow told Minow. “Good for you—you’ll get a lot
of heat and criticism, but don’t lose your courage!” Those messages, said
Minow, gave him “the backbone” he needed to focus the FCC’s mission on
requiring that broadcasters serve the public, as well as their private,
interest, and to increase choices for American viewers.
