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A Vaster Wasteland - The Atlantic

theatlantic.com · 1,573 words · saved by 1 readers

Fifty years after his landmark speech declaring television programming a “vast wasteland,” the author surveys the reshaped media landscape and lays out a plan to keep television and the Internet vibrant, democratic forces for the next half century.

F ifty years ago next month, I stood before the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters for my inaugural public address as President Kennedy’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. My first objective in the job was to clean up the agency and the industry, which before I arrived had been embroiled in quiz-show, payola, and agency scandals. My second was to expand choice for viewers, by advancing new technologies in the belief that more choice would result in more and better content. My objective at the convention was to tell broadcasters that the FCC would enf

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