- Born
- Died
- Birth nameNewton Norman Minow
- Newton Minow was born on January 17, 1926 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. He was married to Josephine Baskin. He died on May 6, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- SpouseJosephine Baskin(1949 - February 17, 2022) (her death, 3 children)
- He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, by President Barack Obama, in a live televised ceremony held in the East Room of the White House, on November 22, 2016, along with twenty other recipients, the the largest, and final Medal of Freedom ceremony of Obama's presidency. At this ceremony, the twenty-one recipients, in alphabetical order, included: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Elouise Cobell (posthumous award given to her son), Ellen DeGeneres, Robert De Niro, Richard Garwin, Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, Frank Gehry, Margaret Hamilton (as Margaret H. Hamilton), Tom Hanks, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (posthumous award given to her niece), Michael Jordan, Maya Lin, Lorne Michaels, Newton Minow, Eduardo Padron (as Eduardo Padrón), Robert Redford, Diana Ross, Vin Scully, Bruce Springsteen, and Cicely Tyson.
- He promoted televised presidential debates, and worked with the League of Women Voters to find a workaround solution to the FCC's equal-time provision.
- He was a Federal Communications Commission chairman who in 1961 referred to US television as a "vast wasteland". He made the remark in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters convention. Sherwood Schwartz, creator of "Gilligan's Island," reputedly named the marooned S.S. Minnow after the FCC chief as a retort.
- After serving in the Army Signal Corps, he attended Northwestern University on an accelerated program for returning WWII veterans. He earned an undergraduate degree and a law degree.
- Was mentioned in an Allan Sherman song entitled "Oh Boy" as Newton "B." Minow.
- 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 ... I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.
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