Tag: TV history

Boomers Watched the “Vast Wasteland” of TV

On May 9, 1961, Newton Minow, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), delivered a speech at a convention of the National Association of Broadcasters. He had been appointed by President John Kennedy shortly after taking office that January. In his speech, Minow berated and challenged broadcasters by telling them that the current state of TV programming was a “vast wasteland.”

Mr. Minow was 35 years old when Kennedy appointed him as chair of the FCC, despite not having experience in the media industry. A lawyer by trade, Mr. Minow was known to the Kennedys, having worked as a law clerk for Fred Vinson, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and then on the presidential campaigns of Adlai Stevenson and John Kennedy’s successful run for the presidency. Mr. Minow reportedly had frequent conversations with the president’s brother, Robert, then the Attorney General of the United States, about children’s television programming. The two men shared a concern that children (baby boomers!) were not being taught anything of substance on TV, either from a cultural, civic or history perspective or for academic advancement. Both men shared the belief that television had a great deal of potential to fill that need. Soon after, President Kennedy shared their concerns.

Mr. Minow stated:

When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse.

Minow went on to say that he believed if TV viewers were offered more choice, they would tune in to more educational and cultural programming. He was not looking to regulate, censor or affect broadcasters, other than to keep them in line with current FCC regulations, to serve the public interest and expand viewer choices.

Reaction to Mr. Minow’s speech were mostly positive, but some saw his words as meddling in an area in which he had no experience. In 1964, Sherwood Schwartz, the creator and producer of the TV show Gilligan’s Island (1964-67), named the ill-fated sailing vessel that begins the show’s storyline the S.S. Minnow as a satiric barb aimed at Mr. Minow.

The same year Newton Minow gave his speech, he advocated for a bill making its way though Congress that would expand the number of TV stations in the country. There were only three major broadcasting networks, and they were ensconced on the available VHF channels. Local broadcasters operating on UHF channels were being pushed out of business because most TV sets were not equipped to tune in to UHF channels. The All-Channel Receiver Act, introduced in 1961 and passed in 1962, required that all TV sets sold in the United States be equipped to receive these extra channels. This bill paved the way for more educational television like Sesame Street (first aired in 1969), the creation of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the new networks Fox, Univision and Telemundo.

Newton Minow also advocated for the advancement of communications satellites. The Space Race was underway, but Minow had a vision of what worldwide communications could do to inform people and assist nations in working out their differences. President Kennedy took the advice of his FCC chair and in 1962, Telstar, the first U.S. communications relay satellite, was launched.

Boomers may or may not remember the specifics of these historical undertakings, but there is no question that baby boomers benefited from the added TV channels and more access to educational television that happened as a result of Newton Minow’s vision and public service.

Was the addition of more educational television part of your school or home viewing, boomers?

Boomers Recall Events of the First Months of 1971

When TV commercials are using songs from the boomer era we would not expect to hear in that venue, it’s difficult for Baby Boomers not to have flashbacks. For example, currently Coldwell Banker is using Simon and Garfunkel’s Homeward Bound (1966); Square has Shape of Things to Come from Max Frost & the Troops (1968) in its commercial; and Geico is using Build Me Up Buttercup by the Foundations (1968), to advertise motorcycle insurance. All of those songs appeared more than 50 years ago. That got Mister Boomer wondering what was happening at this time of year, 50 years ago?

See if you recall these events that occurred between January and March of 1971:

  • January 1971
    Cigarette commercials were banned on TV, beginning midnight January 2, 1971. That allowed for advertising to be broadcast during the holiday football bowl games. The final cigarette commercial was broadcast at 11:59 pm on January 1st.
  • All in the Family premiered on CBS. While not highly-rated in its first season, one year later it was the most-watched show on TV.
  • Remember the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway in December of 1969? Show management hired the Hell’s Angels as security agents. Hell’s Angels member Alan Passaro was charged in the stabbing death of Meredith Hunter that day. On January 19, 1971, he was acquitted of the charges on the grounds of self-defense. Hunter was alleged to have drawn a revolver on Passaro.
  • George McGovern, then a Democratic U.S. Senator from South Dakota, was the first person to announce his candidacy for President of the United States in the 1972 election. Ultimately, McGovern won the Democratic Party’s nomination, but he lost the election by a landslide to Republican Richard Nixon, the incumbent president.
  • Speaking of U.S. Presidents, the boyhood home of Dwight D. Eisenhower, located in Abilene, Kansas, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
  • The murder trial of Charles Manson and his three “family” followers ended with guilty verdicts in the Tate-LaBianca murders in August of 1969.
  • The Comics Code Authority eased restrictions on portrayal of certain fictional characters in comics, allowing for horror character depictions of vampires, ghouls and werewolves.
  • America’s first astronaut in space, Alan Shepard, was headed back up on January 31. As part of Apollo 14, this time he would walk on the moon.

 

  • February 1971
    Alan Shepard became the oldest man to walk on the moon (at that point). He surprised TV viewers on February 5 by driving two golf balls with a makeshift golf club as an illustration of the moon’s lower gravitational field.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sh9sn3cEx8
  • James Cash Penney, founder of the Golden Rule Store, which later became J.C. Penney department stores, died at the age of 95.
  • On February 15, the country celebrated the first Presidents’ Day. National legislation had established this new federal holiday, combining the two state holidays of Lincoln’s birthday (February 12) and Washington’s birthday (February 22).
  • President Richard Nixon made his first recording on his secret taping system. He had installed nine microphones in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room. The world remembers how that system worked against him in the events surrounding the Watergate break-in one year later.
  • President Richard Nixon, that same month, proposed a program for national health care, called the National Health Strategy. Among its provisions, the act required employers to pay up to 65 percent of their employees’ health insurance, starting in July of 1973, and increasing to 75 percent by 1976. It also allocated $100 million through the National Cancer Act of 1971 for the research and treatment of cancer. The measure was passed in a bipartisan vote.

 

  • March 1971
    Future president and former Texas Congressman, George H.W. Bush, assumed the office of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
  • The first performance of Stairway to Heaven, by Led Zeppelin, occurred in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
  • In New York City’s Madison Square Garden, heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier defeated former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali in a 15 round bout decided on points.
  • The U.S. House of Representatives approved the proposal for the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, which would lower the national voting age to 18 years old. After previous unanimous approval by the U.S. Senate, the amendment went on to the states for ratification. It gained the quickest approval of any constitutional change in U.S. history, becoming effective on July 1. Boomers will recall this became an issue in 1968, when protestors of the Vietnam war pointed out, as the song said, young men were “old enough to kill, but not for voting.”
  • The Ed Sullivan Show aired its final show on March 28, after 23 seasons. It’s the TV show where boomers were introduced to The Beatles, on February 9, 1964.
  • A U.S. Army court-martial trial found Lt. William Calley guilty of 22 murders in the My Lai massacre of March 16, 1968 in Vietnam, and he was sentenced to life in prison. President Nixon altered the sentence to house arrest at Fort Benning, pending appeal. Ultimately, Calley was paroled in August of 1974.
  • Starbucks opened its first coffee shop in Seattle, Washington on March 30.
  • The final day of March, 1971, the first Eisenhower dollar coins were pressed at the San Francisco branch of the U.S. Mint.

Which of these events of 50 years ago stir a memory for you, boomers? Did you go on to give your grandchildren Eisenhower dollar coins?