A new season of PBS’ “The Open Mind” premiers on Saturday with new host Alexander Heffner. If the name sounds familiar, that is because Heffner is the grandson of the original host, Richard D. Heffner.
“Open Mind” premiered in May 1956 as a weekly public affairs program was designed to elicit guests’ most meaningful insights into the challenges Americans face in a variety of contemporary areas of national concern.
The season premiere features PBS and FCC Chairman Emeritus Newton Minow, as he recounts the history of public television’s origins and charts our path from a “Vast Wasteland” to the future of a civic-conscious American discourse. Minow provides insight into public television’s bipartisan birth, the ideals of the medium broadly and how far mainstream programming has veered from them.