It is not enough to cater to the nation's whims--you must also serve the nation's needs. And I would add this--that if some of you persist in a relentless search for the highest rating and the lowest common denominator, you may very well lose your audience. I want to make clear some of the fundamental principles which guide me.
First: The people own the air. They own it as much in prime evening time as they do at 6 o'clock Sunday morning. For every hour that the people give you, you owe them something. I intend to see that your debt is paid with service. Second : I think it would be foolish and wasteful for us to continue any worn-out wrangle over the problems of payola, rigged quiz shows and other mistakes of the past.
There are laws on the books, which we will enforce. But there is no chip on my shoulder. Third : I believe in the free enterprise system. I want to see broadcasting improved and I want you to do the job. I am proud to champion your cause. It is not rare for American businessmen to serve a public trust. Yours is a special trust because it is imposed by law. Fourth : I will do all I can to help educational television. There are still not enough educational stations, and major centers of the country still lack usable educational channels.
Fifth : I am unalterably opposed to governmental censorship. There will be no suppression of programming which does not meet with bureaucratic tastes. Sixth : I did not come to Washington to idly observe the squandering of the public's airwaves. I believe in the gravity of my own particular sector of the New Frontier. There will be times perhaps when you will consider that I take myself or my job too seriously. Frankly, I don't care if you do. Now, how will these principles be applied? Clearly, at the heart of the FCC's authority lies its power to license, to renew or fail to renew, or to revoke a license.
As you know, When your license comes up for renewal, your performance is compared with your promises. And because airtime is so expensive, they talk to us in slogans and slurs, and only obliquely, if at all, about substance.
Recent court decisions that it is constitutional to limit contributions but not expenditures seem to me to threaten the life of the democratic process. Of course, any limitations on free speech are a concern in our constitutional system, and no one should suppose that the problem of cash in our campaigns has an easy First Amendment answer.
But television is another matter. If broadcasters are to continue as the lone beneficiaries of their valuable spectrum assignments, it is not too much to require that, as a public service, they provide time to candidates for public office. That time is not for the candidates. It is for the voters. As we think about the next 50 years, I remember a story President Kennedy told a week before he was killed. The story was about French Marshal Louis-Hubert-Gonzalve Lyautey, who walked one morning through his garden with his gardener.
He stopped at a certain point and asked the gardener to plant a tree there the next morning. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Sign In Subscribe. Slackers of the World, Unite! Ellen Cushing. My father, an electrical engineer, came home from work that day and proclaimed that I spent too much time in front of the set, which was true.
So he pulled an essential vacuum tube out of our old black-and-white clunker, and announced that he would reinstall the component only when he thought it appropriate. The next afternoon, I unscrewed the back of TV again, read the inside schematic, and identified the manufacturer ID number of the missing tube. Down to the corner appliance repair store I went with my allowance money, purchased a new piece of hardware, reinstalled the device, and was happily keeping up with Skipper, the Professor, and Mary Ann within minutes.
But even then I knew that most television was pretty low grade including Gilligan. Murrow's Harvest of Shame. Minow was spot on when he said that nothing was better than these offerings, which were so frustratingly rare. The irony of Minow's immortal phrase is that the landscape to which he referred wasn't very vast compared with today. In any given major market, such as New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, TV usually consisted of three network outlets, three locally owned stations, and a chronically underfunded nonprofit venue, which didn't get any PBS support until As tedious as the network fare often was, the locally owned stations were worse.
They were jokes — their best efforts focused on children's programming, followed by "professional wrestling," old movie reruns, and talk shows hosted by local lunatics — the clearest link between then and now. They were endless. If Adolf Hitler had shown up during a public TV pledge drive segment in asking for viewer support, I'm not sure that I would have been surprised. But if you had told me back then that television would morph into what it is now, I would have accused you of imbibing one of the more noted controlled substances associated with that era.
A lot of digital water has gone under the bridge since I illicitly repaired my dad's vacuum tube TV set. This means that I can sit in my living room as I did last night and watch a dazzling performance by the concert pianist Valentina Lisitsa. I can instantly access a wide range of great documentaries on everything from the history of Catalonia to how to get a human safely to Mars.
All that plus all the movies I can stand. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland. You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons.
And endlessly, commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it. The person who came up with the phrase was journalist John Bartlow Martin.
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