[Download] "From Vast Wasteland to Electronic Garden: Responsibilities in the New Video Environment." by Federal Communications Law Journal # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: From Vast Wasteland to Electronic Garden: Responsibilities in the New Video Environment.
- Author : Federal Communications Law Journal
- Release Date : January 01, 2003
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 271 KB
Description
Newton Minow's "Vast Wasteland" speech (1) set a tone for his tenure at the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC"), and will forever be associated with Minow's very distinguished legal career. It was brave, brash, and on point. It suggested a lack of responsibility by television broadcasters to air cultural content, to balance crass entertainment with a wider variety of opinions and viewpoints, and to serve the local community as a public service in exchange for their public licenses. Let us remember how different the period of Minow's domain was from the present. It was an era when stations such as Jackson, Mississippi's WLBT-TV segregated its programming with only white faces, (2) when networks relied on cigarette ads, (3) programmers fixed quiz shows, (4) and their radio brethren took payola to air pop records. (5) But it was also a time when news was thought of as a public service more than a profit center, when important political events, such as national political party conventions, were televised to the nation by all three networks and were watched by ninety percent of the television audience, and the World Series was played and televised during the daytime. Depending on one's vantage point, broadcasters of the 1950s were innocent, patronizing, or venal. But the point of Minow's speech was clear: There was good fare on the air, but most of what was on the screen was below the standards of those who put it there, below the spirit of public service to community, and below the potential of the medium. Minow urged the broadcasters in attendance to right their own ship, take responsibility, and cultivate the wasteland into an electronic garden.