'Open Mind'

When I went downstairs (from my third-floor home office to my first floor) to make lunch today, I turned on the TV and found, at noon, something I didn't know was still on television: The Open Mind. This is a PBS discussion program — not to say "talk show", which is much too frivolous to apply to The Open Mind— that has been on TV for over 55 years! That is to say, it was on TV even before I (now 67 years old) even started to watch serious public-affairs programming. It is hosted now, as at its origin, by Richard D. Heffner, who was identified by a written subtitle onscreen as the 'Dowling Professor of Something or Other at Rutgers University'. The guy is over 86 years old, and looks great for that age. Moreover, he is apparently still teaching — HOW? (at the New Brunswick campus, I assume, to which he commutes from NYC).

In that I don't have fotos on point for the bulk of this discussion, I offer today some fotos of the NJ State Capitol and its vicinity in Trenton. You will see the connections if you read on.

The show "currently originates from the studios of the CUNY Graduate Center and airs on public broadcasting stations nationwide." Golly. I started college in the Freshman Program at the Graduate Center (of the City University of New York) in 1967. Small world, no? The Graduate Center was then on West 42nd Street between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas (often improperly called "Sixth Avenue"), but is now in the old B. Altman department-store building on Fifth Avenue and 34th Street.

Even more startling to me than the fact that this show is still going, with its original host, is that today's guest was Newton Minow (pronounced mín.oe, with a short-I, like "minnow" — tho you wouldn't know that from the spelling). Minow was JFK's Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. On May 9, 1961, in a speech before the National Association of Broadcasters ("NAB"), Minow famously denounced American television as "a vast wasteland". It was, alas, nowhere near so vast nor nearly so desolate a wasteland then as it is now, more than 50 years later. Indeed, compared to today, television then was in a veritable Golden Age. For one thing, HALF as much time was given over to commercials! The Wikipedia article on Minow's NAB speech says:

Minow often remarks that the two words best remembered from the speech are "vast wasteland," but the two words he wishes would be remembered are "public interest."

He made that same point today on The Open Mind. He also said that Edward R. Murrow called him and said "You stole my speech". Minow was puzzled. He recalled today the earliest reactions he got from prominent people.

Ambassador [Joseph] Kennedy [father of JFK, foned and] said, "Newt, I told my son that was the best speech since his Inaugural Address. You stick with it, you do what you’re doing … anybody gives you any trouble … you call me … good-bye" … hung up.

The next call was from [legendary CBS newsman] Edward R. Murrow, who was then … had left CBS and he was running the US Information Agency for the government. And he called and he said, "Newt, you stole my speech".

HEFFNER: (Laughter)

MINOW: I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Don’t you remember the speech I gave in your home town of Chicago two years ago". And I said, "Ed, I’m sorry … I’m not familiar with it." He said, "I’ll send it to you. You stole my speech".

Well, I read his speech and he was right because he gave the same speech, two years earlier to the news directors in television.

Great minds think alike. I assume that Murrow's and Minow's speeches were not really "the same" but made the same major point. (Note the two R's in "Murrow" but one N in "Minow" — again, you can see why I'm a spelling reformer.)

Curiously, there is a transcript of this show available online, but not a podcast. You'd think a podcast would be a lot easier to generate. But perhaps it's substatially more expensive to distribute.

In WNET promos several years back, celebrating the creation of WNET from Newark's WNTA, Edward R. Murrow (who notoriously was always seen smoking a cigaret, so 'cool' was he — until he died from lung cancer, the moron) spoke to the historic nature of that event — even tho, according to Minow, today, there were already public TV stations in Minow's hometown, Chicago, and Boston. What might have been different is that the commercial stations of nearby NYC joined together to fund the takeover of a (rival) commercial station within the Tristate Metropolitan Area and convert it to noncommercial use (so it would no longer compete for advertising dollars).

Detail, NJ State Capitol Building, Trenton. Most state capitols are wonderful buildings. I've seen (and fotograffed) perhaps 30 of them.

Wikipedia's article about WNET says that the first broadcasts of WNDT (its original call letters, for "New Dimensions in Television") were out of the (then) Mosque Theater, now Newark Symphony Hall. Perhaps they originated from behind the door to the Government Access TV Studio I showed here as the 7th foto on October 30, 2011.

Symphony Hall, flanked left by the Newark Boys Chorus School and right, two doors down, the Symphony Hall Box Office. I don't know why the box office is not at the main entrance. Seems odd to me.

The Wikipedia article about WNET (the call letters for which then stood for "National Educational Television") contains, a bit earlier than what I have heretofore cited, this interesting paragraf (well, interesting to me at least):

Outgoing New Jersey governor Robert B. Meyner [pronounced míe.ner], addressing state lawmakers' concerns over continued programming specific to New Jersey, and fearing the FCC would move the channel 13 allocation to New York City, petitioned the United States Court of Appeals on September 6, 1961, to block the sale of WNTA-TV [predecessor to WNET]. The court ruled in the state's favor two months later.

Why has no NJ nor Newark official since then done anything whatsoever to stop the transfer — lock, stock, and barrel — of Newark's TV station to NYC? Gov. Christie made everything worse by turning over to WNET the whole New Jersey Network as well! What is wrong  with this state? Why hasn't Mayor Booker sued in Federal court to have WNET returned — lock, stock, and barrel — to Newark? A Federal court found in our favor once. Maybe it will again. And maybe the FCC, without need of a lawsuit in Federal court, will find that WNET, and the NJN stations, have been improperly moved from their cities of license (in New JERSEY), and thus order the return of WNET to Newark and the NJN stations to their NJ cities of license.

But the FCC is not going to do that of its own instance. Someone has to demand it, somebody in power. Are you listening, Mr. Booker? Newark is not a colony of NYC, to be denuded of its resources by rapacious outsiders. The best of NET can perfectly well operate in Newark. I once saw, for instance, the (very striking) Rafael PiRoman in Newark Penn Station, boarding the same train to Manhattan as I did. So he is perfectly willing to work in Newark, as, we must assume, is Steve Adubato (the Younger), whose father (at least) lives in Newark, and who may himself live here.

I wondered if either of the Adubatos is in the (one-volume) Encyclopedia of New Jersey. I recently discovered, in reorganizing some things in my house, that I had indeed bought that expensive, large-format book several years ago but forgot that I had done so. My cats knocked it down from a shelf on an open bookcase — which cats can do, no matter how high a shelf or how titely you think you have wedged the books — and I decided, this most recent time a cat knocked it down(!), to move it to my bedroom bookshelf. I don't let the cats into the bedroom, even tho it might be nice to have them sleep near my head, precisely because they knock things down.

In any case, neither of the Steve Adubatos (Adubatoes?) has an entry in that encyclopedia, so I won't be offended that I don't either. Then again, neither does WNET, so the Encyclopedia does not recognize WNET as a Newark station. Hm.

State office building immediately alongside the Capitol, Trenton.

In my junior year of high school I attended a mock legislature in Trenton sponsored by the YMCA/YWCA youth groups Hi-Y (boys) and Tri-Hi-Y (girls). I was in one of the Senate groups. We met in the Senate chamber of the state Capitol building. At one session, Governor Meyner (my hero for defending NJ's broadcast needs, above) addressed us, and during the Q&A that followed, I asked a question that he answered. I do not remember the question, but do remember that he was an impressive, forthrite man who did this state proud. During that same mock legislature, the guy who won the vote for mock-governor was somebody whose first name was "Craig", pronounced kreg, rather than as my parents pronounced it, kraeg. I never liked kraeg, but loved kreg as soon as I heard it, in Trenton. The family however, used my first name, "Lee".

Capitol dome seen beyond a handrail alongside a stairway to the second floor.

When I studied U.S. history and learned about Robert E. Lee, the worst traitor any country ever had the misfortune to suffer, I turned off to that name. (There was a restaurant, on the water or even on a pier in the Keyport area, that we used to pass on trips between North and Central Jersey, named the Robert E. Lee. That irritated me.) Six years after that mock legislature, I shifted from "Lee C." to "L. Craig", thanks to that day in Trenton. I thought it was a monumental decision, but my mother pointed out that my brother, named at birth "Paul Brian", was known in the family as "Brian" / "P. Brian", so my name-change wasn't hard for the family to accept. I, of course, liked to refer to my (older) brother as "P. Brain".
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Which brings us back to The Open Mind. Here we go all around the mulberry bush, but we end up where we started!

The Empire State Building and its broadcast tower for all major television stations in the Tristate Metropolitan Area.

If you are up and wondering what to watch on TV some Sunday at noon, check out The Open Mind on channel 13. It's a low-key, high-brow but not hifalutin talk show on Newark's stolen TV station, WNET, presided over by a Rutgers professor.