"The People Own the Air"

The toughest TV critic yet to appear in the U.S. last week dared the station and network operators and owners to sit down in front of their sets from sign-on to sign-off. They would see, he told them, "a vast wasteland--a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation 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."

The critic was Newton N. Minow, 35, new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and his audience was the National Association of Broadcasters' convention in Washington. Accustomed to a mild FCC that never interfered with programing, the TV owners and operators were more deeply shaken by Minow's blast than they had been by the quiz scandals or anything else in TV history.

Debts to Be Paid. Lawyer Minow refused to accept the broadcasters' argument that they are only giving the public what it wants. For one thing, there is some doubt as to what the public wants, and ratings are at best only "an indication of how many people saw what you gave them . . . I am not convinced that the people's taste is as low as some of you assume." Broadcasters, said Minow, ought to follow the example of the newspaper publishers, whose own polls consistently show that the two most popular items in the papers are the comics and the sob sisters. "But the news is still on the front pages of all newspapers, the editorials are not replaced by more comics, the newspapers have not become one long collection of advice to the lovelorn."

Even if "people would more often prefer to be entertained than stimulated or informed," said Minow, "your obligations are not satisfied if you look only to popularity . . . It is not enough to cater to the nation's whims--you must also serve the nation's needs. 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 . . . Never have so few owed so much to so many."

How to Bridge the Gap. While promising that there would be no censorship, Minow announced that the FCC will no longer automatically renew the licenses of stations that insist on lowest-common-denominator programing. In the future, the agency will hold public hearings on stations whose performance has not measured up to their promise to offer a diversified output. "For those few of you who really believe that the public interest is merely what interests the public," said

Minow, "I hope these hearings will arouse no little interest."

Minow's speech revealed both a first-rate legal mind and a deep personal conviction. Born in Milwaukee, where his father owned a chain of laundries, he is a graduate of Northwestern Law School ('50), where he edited the Law Review. In 1951 he was taken on as a law clerk by Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred Vinson; a year later he joined the staff of Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson as an administrative assistant. In 1955 Minow joined Stevenson's newly formed law firm, became a partner two years later. His personal taste in TV runs to public-service shows during Sunday's intellectual "ghetto" hours.

Minow's demand for better TV was seconded by:

P: Abraham Ribicoff, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, who gave the broadcasters a pretty tall order: "The national interest requires that we raise the cultural level of our country and that we bridge the gap between those of our citizens who have had the benefit of a great deal of formal education and those who have not."

P: Former Florida Governor Leroy Collins, who decried the low estate of broadcasters as compared with editors and publishers. As Governor of Florida, Collins recalled, he always turned to radio and TV if he wanted to reach a large audience, but only to the press "when I wanted help in carrying out my program, when it was influence I needed to help lead the thinking of the people." This situation can only change, said Collins, if TV, like the press, begins taking sides and editorializing, instead of being merely a "passive observer."

A Hint in Time. The buffeted broad casters angrily replied that the Government was trying to control TV programing by using the FCC's licensing power as a club. "If you extend Minow's words, you get into tricky water," went a typical complaint. " 'I may not renew your license if I don't like your programing,' he says, and then in the next breath he insists there will be no censorship."

Among broadcasters, Minow's speech was hailed as "courageous"--which it certainly was--only by Leonard Goldenson, president of American Broadcasting-Paramount Theaters, Inc., parent corporation of the ABC network, which has risen to the top of the TV heap through its blood-and-thunder programing. NBC and CBS maintained official silence. But most broadcasters took the speech as a deliberate tactic to scare stations and networks into better programing, and as a hint that they should do something about it soon.

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