The Public's Defender
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television THE PUBLICS DEFENDER BY MARVIN KITMAN l would like to say a few thousand words about the Nick Johnson Seat on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency that regulates...
...That way the business of the FCC would be speeded up without Johnson's perennial dissents...
...I recently attended an after-hours meeting with Commissioner Johnson and his closest advisers where his future was discussed...
...No FCC commissioner has ever appeared as frequently on the medium he is supposed to regulate as Nick Johnson...
...There can't be more than four Democrats known to the Administration...
...The Nick Johnson Seat is traditionally held by a representative of the public-the people who actually watch television or listen to the radio...
...It's not an easy choice...
...At least they are not identified as being against the public interest...
...Nick Johnson understandably had problems adjusting in this remarkable environment...
...The people who watch television should have the same rights...
...If given the Dick Cavett Show (and the Cavett audience), the theory runs, Johnson would start to understand television's real problems...
...There is speculation that the delicate negotiations between Johnson's advisers and the New York Times' managing editor, Abe Rosenthal, may already have begun...
...I will refuse to endorse any nominee for the Nick Johnson Seat unless he is cleared first with the following groups: National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting...
...He rides a bike to work...
...Action for Children's Television and Big Bird (leaders and addresses of these groups available to White House on request...
...It would be like hanging up your uniform or retiring your number after your career is over," said the man from Iowa City...
...Remember what President Nixon did with the Jewish Seat on the Supreme Court...
...The FCC is an unusual body...
...It is named after its current occupant, Commissioner Nicholas Johnson of Iowa City, Iowa...
...After 13 weeks, his option would be dropped and any further comment from him about TV would seem like sour grapes...
...I harvested one tomato that my landlady ate and two cantaloupes that were stolen...
...whom I'll support for the Nick Johnson Seat in 1973...
...in Japan), and one theory holds that LBJ picked him because the President was secretly against his wife's having her own media empire...
...Every government official has his inner circle: Johnson's group of hirsute young assistants is known as "the inner tube...
...The other six commissioners are usually men and women sympathetic to the broadcasting industry...
...One of the most recent appointees-a woman-continually refers to the commission as "the FTC...
...Still another is an authority on Samoan television, perhaps because he served as governor of American Samoa before coming to the FCC...
...please write on official stationary...
...A creative choice, of course, would be Nick Johnson himself...
...They're totally useless, except for converting into rattles which I am doing now...
...Moreover, it usually takes three or four years of hard study to find out what's wrong with, say, television...
...But that's politics...
...All of this may be academic...
...Only the commissioner had to be somebody from Illinois, not California...
...He may be right...
...And he is just as knowledgeable...
...Citizens Communications Center...
...The commissioner confided that he expects to become a farmer after his term expires...
...An additional prerequisite is a familiarity with television...
...The Administration really wanted somebody with a show business/TV background," he said, "like Shirley Temple Black...
...Solutions to the problems take even longer...
...As far as I know, John Connally has turned the job down, and that does not leave too many other potential candidates...
...There is nothing illegal or un-American about this...
...The appointment of Johnson to the Times would strike incalculable terror in the hearts of the networks, as well as give the commissioner the kind of power he lacks at the FCC...
...Few have had as much charisma?Johnson makes Newton Minow look like the wasteland...
...The one thing I am certain of at this time is the need for reforming the way the government selects FCC commissioners...
...In recent months Howard Thompson, the number three movie critic, has been sharing the TV chores with John O'Connor, the number one critic since Gould retired in 1970...
...I'm going into soybeans, cantaloupes, tomatoes and gourds," he explained...
...They're going to hang me up instead...
...It's the only organization," explained a Ford Foundation official, "where the left hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing...
...Senators Fred Harris or Tom Eagleton, or former Attorney General Ramsey Clark are possibilities...
...Ezra Pound probably would have made a fair FCC commissioner...
...Black Effort for Soul in Television...
...Commissioner Johnson stressed that he wouldn't seek a crop allotment for not planting soybeans next year...
...What a marvelous opportunity the Administration has to find a public representative to fill the Nick Johnson Seat...
...While speculating on the future of the Nick Johnson Seat the other day, Commissioner Johnson said he thought there is a chance the Administration might simply dissolve the seat...
...Since 1964, he had been making a name for himself in government as a wildly idealistic Federal maritime commissioner (among his visionary schemes was building American ships at the lowest possible price, i.e...
...Nick Johnson's hair is too long...
...Nick Johnson was named to the FCC in 1966 by Lyndon Baines Johnson, husband of the Texas broadcasting tycoon, Lady Bird Johnson...
...The Committee of 1,000,000 for the Reappointment of Nicholas Johnson to the FCC," organized by Professor Monroe Price of the UCLA Law School, favors this action...
...Johnson's broadcasting involvement in Austin and her husband's work in Washington, it was surely the new FCC commissioner...
...I've already got a spread out behind my apartment house in Washington, 4 feet by 20 feet, with a chain-link fence for my soybeans...
...Of the men around today, few seem likely to fit the Nick Johnson Seat perfectly...
...All the regulatory commissions in the past have had members who were sympathetic to the groups they were supposed to regulate...
...Another commissioner always falls asleep during meetings, and who can blame him...
...But the former law professor (University of California) and law partner (Covington and Burling) chose instead to get involved in other hopeless causes...
...he's one of the few people in the nation who remembers the great hope for TV (circa 1960...
...my soybeans all were frozen...
...Next July 1, after seven years of crusading for the public interest in hundreds of lonely fights-ranging from monopoly control of stations to minority representation in staff and programing to what television as a medium does to our marbles Nick Johnson will be leaving the FCC...
...The Nick Johnson Seat" is an unofficial designation, much as the place on the Supreme Court occupied by Justices Cardozo, Frankfurter, Goldberg, and Fortas was known as the "Jewish Seat...
...One way the networks could break up the Times-Johnson merger would be to offer Nick Johnson his own talk show...
...He is as interested in the media and their technological developments as the former Times critic, Jack Gould, the last reviewer whose opinion was important to the industry...
...The Administration traditionally clears all appointments to regulatory commissions with the industries being regulated, to make sure that the appointees are acceptable to their constituencies...
...Some observers feel this concern with going back to the land is a metaphor for Commissioner Johnson's real goal: becoming the television critic at the New York Times...
...leading industry wags to the conclusion that something is going on at the Times...
...Gourds were my best crop...
...Informed sources close to the Administration in Washington, however, say this is unlikely to happen...
...Then there is the commissioner who talks nothing but UHF...
...If anyone was crazy enough to blow the whistle on the possible conflict of interest between Ms...
...Being friendly with the corporations you police is all right, I guess, as long as you are fair...
...In the past, an aide noted, he has been critical of giving subsidies to farmers with government connections (such as Senator Eastland of Mississippi...
...He is the only government official who has a hi-fi rig in his outer office tuned to contemporary music...
...The worst that can be said about the practice is that it may be immoral...
...According to a reliably informed source, she got on the FCC by default...
...Then, he has to be a Democrat...
...Tommy Smothers would be qualified in some ways, but it's not clear where he stands on increased rates for the telephone company...
...By reappointing Commissioner Johnson, President Nixon would save some poor idealist from wasting three years duplicating the Iowan's basic research...
...For one thing, the nominee should be an Iowa Unitarian...
...Stern Community Law Firm...
...Nobody is more qualified for the job than Johnson...
...On Television THE PUBLICS DEFENDER BY MARVIN KITMAN l would like to say a few thousand words about the Nick Johnson Seat on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency that regulates broadcasting...
...The last and conceivably most important qualification is that the nominee be someone closely identified with the public interest...
...He is one of the best writers ever to serve on the FCC, his articles having often been printed in the Times and other publications...
...Insiders point out also that Vice President Agnew and Commissioner Johnson have never been close...
Vol. 56 • January 1973 • No. 1
