"When Will It Begin?"

After FCChairman Newton Minow made his "Vast Wasteland" speech assaulting TV programing (TIME, May 19), hopeful network executives and silver-lining admen began telling one another that Minow would soon back down and away. Last week in Chicago, returning to his old law school at Northwestern, Minow made it clearer than ever that he has no such intention. Before a symposium on "Freedom and Responsibility in Broadcasting," Minow presented what approximated a lawyer's brief to back up his claim that FCC has a right to deny licenses to TV stations whose standards do not serve the public interest.

To those who would raise cries of Government censorship, Minow replied by attacking what he called the "dollar censorship" in television, whereby a broadcaster "simply abdicates his own judgment and turns programing decisions over to an advertiser or his agency." Arguing that Shaw, Shakespeare and Ibsen would probably have failed as young TV playwrights--"too provocative, too concerned with morals and conflicts"--Minow declared that the nub of the problem is that TV licensees think the air is theirs, and do not consider themselves "trustees for the public." Clearly intending to use his power, Chairman Minow finished: "To those few broadcasters who would evade the nation's needs, crying 'Censorship! Oh, where will it end?', I ask: 'Responsibility--when will it begin?' "

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