Broadcasting & Cable, April 14, 2008
By David Bianculli

Actor-writer-director Tim Robbins, who has been known to speak his mind when standing in front of an audience, was asked the give the keynote opening speech Monday at the 2008 National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas.

Then he was asked not to give it -- or, more accurately, advised that the speech he had written might be a little too preachy, scolding and negative to go over well before the 1,000-plus broadcasters in attendance.

In the end, Robbins gave it anyway, delivering important remarks, before an important audience, which bore echoes of newsman Edward R. Murrow's 1958 "wires and lights in a box" speech and FCC Commissioner Newton Minow's 1961 "vast wasteland" address -- thoughtful, prescient speeches beseeching news directors and broadcasters, respectively, to raise the standards of their pervasive and influential medium of television. (Minow's address, like Robbins', was at an NAB convention.)

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