Newton Minow, the FCC Chairman under John F. Kennedy, recalls his legendary 1961 speech labeling television as a “vast wasteland.”
Richard D. Heffner Host, The Open Mind
Newton Minow FCC Chairman
The Open Mind, produced and hosted weekly by Alexander Heffner, elicits guests’ insights into the challenges society faces in contemporary areas of public concern. The program's mission is to engage viewers, especially a generation of young Americans, through a thoughtful excursion into the world of ideas. In a September 2014 New York Times story, host Alexander Heffner described his goal to "interrogate ideas" rather than guests in order to further a "vision of communications and media serving the public interest." True to its roots of nonadversarial conversation, the program explores ideas of the most compelling writers, technologists, artists, practitioners of politics, policy, law and other realms of public life.
