TV & VIDEO - Dec. 30, 1988

From our Newton Minow Memorial Wasteland report: An inmate who says the state of Wisconsin is turning prisoners into TV addicts has failed in a bid to have TV sets banned in the state’s penal facilities. “Wisconsin prisons are chock-full of inmates who are completely addicted to television, soap operas and all,” Adrian Lomax, an inmate at an Oshkosh prison, said in a letter to the Milwaukee Journal. But warden Don Gudmanson rejected the complaint filed Nov. 7, and an appeal to the state health and social services secretary also failed. Gudmanson said TV has a pacifying influence and gives inmates something to do in their idle time. “(Lomax has) come up with a lot of good ideas, but he’s come up with some bad ones, too,” Gudmanson said.