In the early Sixties, Newton Minow, head of the FCC, dismissed commercial television as "a vast wasteland." However, this was the era of sophisticated programs such as "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "The Twilight Zone." "Frightening the Vast Wasteland" looks at horror on American TV from the mid-Fifties to the mid-Eighties. It examines the best horror episodes from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "The Twilight Zone," "Thriller," "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour," "The Outer Limits," "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" and "The New Twilight Zone" to see how they worked to frighten the viewer in the age when the Big Three networks ruled TV.