A Quote by Newton N. Minow

Television is a vast wasteland.

Newton N. Minow

Quote Topics

Television Vast Wasteland

Quote Author

Newton N. Minow
Born: January 17, 1926

When television is good, nothing - not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers - nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there for a day without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

Newton N. Minow

The curtain rises on a vast primitive wasteland, not unlike certain parts of New jersey.

Woody Allen

Television has certainly become a wasteland of quality programming.

Robin Leach

The vision of the Internet as a vast digital wasteland isn't correct. Everything is awesome, and we have more stuff to read than we ever have in history.

Robin Sloan

People have always said since TV was invented what a cultural wasteland it is but I think it is the worst and the best. It is the golden age of television.

Joel McHale

What's really going on here is, this is a media shift. It's comparable to what happened in the 1950s and the birth of electronic mass media back then.This is the birth of a new kind of personal media, where, instead of we're all watching one program, we're all watching each other. And the history of media makes it really clear. Whenever we have a big innovation, the first wave of stuff we do is pretty crummy. The printing press gave us pornography, cheap thrillers, and how-to books. Television gave us Newt Minow's vast wasteland.

Esther Dyson

The theme of the Grail is the bringing of life into what is known as 'the wasteland.' The wasteland is the preliminary theme to which the Grail is the answer. . . It's the world of people living inauthentic lives - doing what they are supposed to do.

Joseph Campbell

Take cyberspace as an example. We had this wonderful utopian vision of a new home for the mind. What we've reaped isn't cyberspace. It's cyberbia. It's this vast, bland wasteland of vulgar people and trivial ideas and pictures of half-naked starlets. But despite all the uncertainty, has there ever been a more fascinating moment to be alive?

Paul Saffo

I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air . . . and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a great wasteland.

Newton N. Minow

Roger Kahn is someone with a gazillion dollars who thinks that he can use his vast fortune to buy television spots, particularly network television, and boost up his positives, make him appear to be a gentleman farmer, and cover up his warts.

Phil Gingrey

I think television has had a vast, unbelievable impact on us.

Billy Graham

The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.

Suzanne Collins

We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast?

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Some of our best and biggest allies in this struggle and fight against radical Islamic terror are Muslims, the vast, vast, vast majority of whom are people who believe in pluralism, freedom, democracy, individual rights.

Paul Ryan

When you watch television, you never see people watching television. We love television because it brings us a world in which television does not exist.