



Arthur L. Singer Jr., who became an unheralded father of public television in the late 1960s after commercial networks were famously accused of broadcasting a “vast wasteland” of programs, died on Wednesday at his home in Westport, Conn. He was 90.

His death was confirmed by his son Charles.

In the formative years of government- and subscriber-funded public television and radio, Mr. Singer was said to have been instrumental in galvanizing federal officials, philanthropies and academics to seed the public airwaves with quality programming and to finance future development.

His efforts came in the wake of a speech in 1961 by Newton N. Minow, the newly named Federal Communications Commission chairman, to a roomful of 2,000 television executives in Washington, in which he dismissed their product as a “vast wasteland.”

In a typical day of broadcasting, Mr. Minow said, “You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western bad men, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials — many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom.”