In some areas, Douglas Edwards with the News and The Huntley-Brinkley Report aired at 6:45 p.m. Peter Gunn moved from NBC to ABC in the fall of 1960.
* formerly You Bet Your Life Note: On NBC, The Campaign and the Candidates aired as an interim series, 9:30–10:30 p.m., from mid-September until the November 8 election.
The networks had numerous holes, which were mostly filled with unscripted material, some of which included political programs in anticipation of the forthcoming 1960 United States presidential election.
On May 9, 1961, at the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters new Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton Minow delivered "Television and the Public Interest," a scathing speech directed at the "procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western badmen, Western goodmen, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons, and, endlessly, commercials, many screaming, cajoling, and offending, and, most of all, boredom [...] Is there one network president in this room who claims he can't do better?
"[2] Minow called TV a "vast wasteland"; the phrase was picked up by the press and resulted in bad publicity for the networks and for the television industry as a whole.
"The best the networks could do was slot a few more public affairs shows, paint rosy pictures for 1962–63, and prepare to endure the barrage of criticism they felt certain would greet the new season.