Mr. Newton Minow, until last week the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has come and gone, and however confused a man he manifestly is, he deserves, I think, a kind word from those who do not believe that the free enterprise system should evolve as a warrant for compulsory Philistinism. What made Mr. Minow controversial was primarily his statement, upon assuming office early in Mr. Kennedy’s Administration, that the television world was a dismaying wasteland of repetitious junk. That statement affronted the feelings of two powerful groups. Firstly, the mass audiences who, having registered their preference via the various popularity recorders, resent being told that their liking for Moon Mullins TV is an index of the low estate of American taste. Secondly, those producers who, pandering to what they understand to be that American taste, resent being told that they are active accomplices in the debasement of American culture.
Buckley
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