Nicholas Johnson interview by Tom Shales, April 6, 1971

Tom Shales: This is Tom Shales. Not so long before we interviewed FCC Commissioner Nicholas Johnson in his Washington office, Rolling Stone Magazine devoted a cover story to him. It was called "The Greening of Nicholas Johnson." At one point, the author of the piece wrote, "It is difficult not to regard Nicholas Johnson as a superstar, one of our few friends." We told Commissioner Johnson before starting the interview that we were thinking of calling this program "Nicholas Johnson Superstar," and what did he think of that? He said, "You can call it anything you want." Tom Shales: Nicholas Johnson came to Washington with powers and abilities. Abilities, anyway. Soon he found himself, of all places, on the National Maritime Administration. Even in a place of such relative obscurity, Johnson managed to make something of a fuss. And when that stint was over, President Lyndon Johnson had another semi-obscure office for the young upstart, the Federal Communications Commission. Since his appointment, however, Commissioner Johnson has hardly maintained radio silence or television silence either. He's been the most active man to serve on the commission. He's made speeches, written books, grown a mustache. To many, he occupies the unique position of communications ombudsman for viewers, listeners and telephone talkers throughout the country. He is almost the Ralph Nader of broadcasting. Tom Shales: Commissioner Johnson's office is on M Street in Washington about a block away from CBS News. Waiting in the outer office for our interview with the commissioner, we listened to rock and soul music from a radio in the corner. At one point, America's Junior Miss, whoever she is, could be heard over the airwaves wanting America's kids not to smoke dope. This was followed on this particular afternoon by one of the top 40 songs of the time, the one called "One Toke Over The Line." The commissioner will see you now. In fact, he comes out to greet you himself, tall and friendly-faced. He escorts you to his office where his trusty bicycle stands poised by the door. He rides it to work every morning. And he takes a seat in a long green reclining lounge chair, which lounges right next to a small Kennedy-esque rocking chair. Tom Shales: Before the interview can start, the Commissioner suggests you read a speech she gave in Des Moines, or a speech he gave in Hartford, or a piece he wrote for TV Guide, or an opinion on which he has recently prepared a lengthy dissent. There have been lots of speeches, there are lots of pieces, and there are a great many dissents. Even lounging with his feet up, Commissioner Johnson is no slouch. Nick Johnson: I try to do what I think is the constructive thing that needs doing. Whatever interest is not being adequately represented, I want to see adequately represented. I want to see a balance. I don't have any particular ideological position. I'm in favor of a process, a process you can call the adversary system when it involves courts; a process you can call democracy when it involves politics; a process you can call education when it involves generally informing the American people; a process you can call free private enterprise when it involves the informed consumers coming into the marketplace. Substantively, I'm in favor of whatever comes out of that process. Now, I have personal views that I contribute as one participant of 204 million to that process, but basically my commitment is to the process, not to any particular ideological conclusion. Tom Shales: Do your critics get you at all? Good old Broadcasting Magazine and another people categorize you as I headline grabber. Nick Johnson: No, I think that's something that you have to put up with as a public official economic interest. Strong, powerful economic interest in this country have run so much of it for so long that they're really quite antagonized at the prospect of anybody standing up to them and talking back. Tom Shales: Well, Ralph Nader complained that General Motors was sort of shadowing him. Have you ever felt a similar harassment from the broadcasting industry? Nick Johnson: Oh, I don't know that I've ever been shadowed. I'd frankly not ... I'd rather not discuss the details of what these guys do. A lot of it you can't ever prove. You kind of get rumors. You get third-hand information back. You have suspicions. Weird things happen. There was this marvelous experience when I was on the Face the Nation Program on CBS. The program was nationally mentioned in TV Guide in the newspapers. It was coming on the air. A half hour after, in fact, it came on the air. The Washington Post the very day it was to appear had it at the wrong time, and nowhere was the fact that I was going to appear mentioned, although they'd known it weeks ahead of time that I was scheduled for that particular week. I told this story to some of the CBS employees standing around the studio afterwards, and they were just wide eyed at the prospect, because they hadn't really thought about this kind of thing at all. Nick Johnson: Finally one of them turned to me and said, "You know what, Commissioner Johnson? You're not paranoid. You've got real enemies." I'm conscious of the fact that I've got real enemies. The State Association of Broadcasters wanted to have me impeached, and before long there were five state associations that had joined in that movement. I gave a speech in Chicago called "Why I Am a Conservative," or "For Whom Does Bell Toil," in which I made the point that Bell Management was promoting policies that not only made subscribers pay more for telephone service, but produced a lower rate of return for shareholders than I felt they were entitled to, which prompted Bell to suggest that I ought to be a disqualified in the future from ever speaking out on telephone matters again, presumably on the grounds that anyone who was encouraging higher rates of return for shareholders obviously didn't have the interest of management. All right? Nick Johnson: I've now joined the distinguished a list of those who have been attacked by Vice President Agnew, so I am conscious that there is not unanimity in support for what it is I am doing, but I must say I'm buoyed up by the public response. Letters I get are just overwhelming. I think people are really looking for some honesty and integrity, independence in government, and they're effusive in their praise and their response when they think they've found it. I think a lot of people who praise what I'm doing are really no better informed about what I'm doing than the people who attack me and aren't informed about what I'm doing. Tom Shales: Do you ever get that knowing Washington feeling that your telephone is tapped? Nick Johnson: Oh, I suppose everybody in Washington thinks their telephone is tapped, but in my case, since it's the telephone company that's probably doing it, it's almost impossible to ever track it down. Tom Shales: They'd almost be foolish to resist the opportunity. Nick Johnson: I'm always amused when I say something over the telephone one afternoon about the telephone company to a friend of mine, and the next day a telephone representative comes around to ask innocently whether or not the same subject has been troubling me recently, and is there anything you could do to help me? Tom Shales: That's not too cool. I'm disappointed. Well, the FCC is wrestling with a lot of biggie, biggie issues right now. What one of them or some other thing has kind of has your dander up at the moment, if indeed it does go up? What's the most critical, crucial, significant thing you think is going on right now in broadcasting? Nick Johnson: Oh, gee, Tom. There's so many issues, and you say which ones have my dander up. I think it's unfortunate that necessarily most of what people know about what I do is what they see in the form of dissenting opinions. Yet I think that myself, as I evaluate my role, that some of the most useful things I've done have not been the science but rather the quiet work behind the scenes working with my fellow commissioners or with other institutions in our society in a private and quiet ways. I'm hopeful, for example, on something like cable television, that that won't be perceived as a partisan issue or one where there's a clear liberal position or conservative position or that sort of thing. Tom Shales: In the case of cable TV, which you cite in your book, How to Talk Back To Your Television Set is a very promising development, like this is going to give the diversity in the localized programming that UHF TV was supposed to give, among other things. But aren't the odds now that cable TV really is just going to be an extension of commercial television, the same big money behind it and the same failures? Nick Johnson: That has certainly been true so far, but we just in March of 1971 had virtually a month of hearings on cable television with some innovations in procedure. We had panels set up to discuss some of these issues. Public interest representatives were present. The issues were fairly thoroughly probed. Tom Shales: But if someone came to you and said, "Really, commissioner Johnson wasn't that kind of a farce? Isn't it all going to go the same way?" I mean, how would you answer them? Be patient, my son. Nick Johnson: Well, I'm not sure that I would say, "Be patient, my son," but I think I would suggest that we at least wait and see what comes out. I mean, I'm not prepared to assume that evil will always triumph. I think if I were, I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. I think I'd leave the FCC. It's only because I have some hope, because I see some progress that I stay on. I mean, I think there is something that a single commissioner can do, even if most of it is done by way of just sending opinions. I think there is something that a single citizen can do. I think there is something that a student can do that, that an angry housewife can do. I've seen it happen. I don't mean that everybody who tries is going to win the first time out of the box. Oftentimes you have to come back again and back again, try different techniques and strategies and so forth, but there are enough victories that I think people are inspired to keep trying. I think that's hopeful. Tom Shales: Well, a Washington TV critic told me once, he said ... I don't know what I was discussing with him. Cable TV, I guess, and I said, "Will this mean better television?" and he said, "The public doesn't want better television. Every time it's been offered to them, they've turned it down." Nick Johnson: I think that's really unfair. They're not really many Americans left to who really believe in democracy, who really believe in the jury system, who really believe in the people. I guess I do. I think that if people are given a decent education and if they're given access to adequate and full information, that they're capable of making intelligent decisions about governing themselves or about a selection of entertainment and artistic product or moral values or any other issue that confronts us as human beings. The problem is often that people are not given adequate information. In the area of entertainment, I think the problem is that we haven't been exposed to alternatives. As someone has said, the choice you'll never know is the choice you'll never make. If all the American people see on their screen is a choice between three Westerns or three situation comedies or three musical variety of specials or whatnot, people will choose either to watch one of the three of them or to turn off their television sets. Nick Johnson: Most of us are not trained to think in terms of the things we'd like to have that don't exist. I mean, that's what a Henry Ford and Thomas Edison are all about. They're the guys who think of things we might like to have that don't yet exist, but most of us aren't inventors. We're not geniuses. We have to be told about new products and how we might use them in fairly precise terms before we know to accept them. The same thing goes for television entertainment. But that's not to say that people couldn't accept them. We get hung up on what's quality, and we assume that there is Hollywood mass-produced entertainment on the one hand in films and television, and then on the other hand, there are lectures by long-haired professors, ballet and symphony orchestras. Nick Johnson: Well, I don't mean to put down professors or ballet or symphony orchestras, but the fact of the matter is that that's saying that classical music is quality and rock music is popular. I just think that's nonsense. I mean, there's good classical music and there's rotten classical music. There's good rock, and there's bad rock. I suppose there's good bowling and there's bad ballet, but art comes from individuals. It doesn't come from corporations. It doesn't come from committees. It doesn't come from manufacturing centers. It comes from individuals. We've got a tremendous resource in this nation of dramatists, for example, who could write original dramas for television, as they did in the early 50s, that would be entertaining. They would be interesting. That's the basic standard for television program. Is it interesting? It's got to be interesting so that people will watch it. Nick Johnson: But to suggest that in order to be interesting, it has to be a corrupting, it has to be devoid of the contribution of individual artists trying to do the best they can, I think that's utter nonsense. I think that you could do original dramas today that would be quite popular that would deal with problems in people's everyday lives, and they would respond to that very positively. Tom Shales: But you said television can't stand the truth. In order for something to be interesting or relevant, doesn't it sort of have to be true or have an element of truth in it? Nick Johnson: Yes, I think so. It's what Tommy Smothers and Mason Williams told me about putting together the Smothers Brothers Show. They watch television for about a year, two years, and they tried to make a list of all the things that never appeared on television. What they realized, they said was they discovered there was this whole strategy, this whole area lying out there that nobody was using. It was called reality, truth, integrity. Tom Shales: At this point in our little talk, the commissioner decided there was too much noise from outside his office. He ordered the tape stopped, went outside and told everybody to be quiet and returned. Nick Johnson: Okay. Where the hell were we? Tom Shales: Truth in television. Well, Mason Williams has said, "Whenever television gets off into life, it gets lost," and I think that's much of the problem. I think what interests people today are the things that affect their daily lives. A lot of broadcasters telling me, "Gee, we can't put on anything in our community that would really interest the people." I say that's nonsense. I say you take any major market in America today and a network affiliated television station that would put on in prime time during the week a show that dealt with the subject of how citizens in that community are working now, new relationships of sexual relations and love and marriage, and what people are experimenting with and how it's working and what's not working and so forth. Tom Shales: I say that show would be the number one rated show in that town. Not because it would be obscene or pornographic or titillating, but because it would deal in a sensitive and realistic manner with a matter of concern to a great many people in the country. This assumption that we all want to escape and we want unreality and so forth, I think is nonsense. I think the surveys that are done on soap operas, people are asked why they watch soap operas and a great many of the viewers say that they watch soap operas because it's educational. It's where they find out how they should get a divorce or whether or not their daughters should get an abortion. They say they learn that from the soap operas. Tom Shales: I think people do want to be exposed to the problems that concerned them most. They want to know what their fellows are thinking about them. Those are the kinds of subjects that dramatists deal with and that art deals with and that real people will talk about, yet it's what television stays away from. Therein lies much of its failure, I think. Nick Johnson: Hasn't maybe the damage already been done? Isn't it maybe too late? I mean, you've said yourself that people don't accept television as reality. Even if they see astronauts on the moon, many think it's another TV show. Tom Shales: Well, this is a part of the problem, and when you say that something other than what's now coming on, the commercial networks gets on, that often it doesn't get as good ratings. I think there are a number of explanations for that. One is that the people have been educated away from it, just as Choate has said, that the children have been educated away from nutritional knowledge on breakfast cereals. People have been educated away from reality and entertainment programming, and they've been educated away from quality in entertainment programming. A second point is that often the shows don't get the same promotion or budgets that are even accorded to television commercials, let alone the major programs. A third thing that's wrong is that oftentimes, even with bad promotion and even with low budgets, these shows do get very good ratings. I mean the National Geographic programs, they had to fight, hammer and claw their way into a network schedule. They've done very well. The Heidi program did very well. Some of these CBS children's programs have done very well. Tom Shales: These are not particularly the world's finest programming, but the point is it's such a cut above the normal dribble that the networks put out, and it is well received by the audience. Some of the Xerox programs and networks wouldn't carry it all, and Xerox actually had to go about the country putting together its own independent Xerox network in order to get the shows out at all. Some of those have received very good ratings. Tom Shales: Finally, I think the thing wrong with this analysis is that it puts all together too much emphasis on ratings qua ratings. I think that you realize that you could take a Shakespearian play, and I pick them because they're so good necessarily, but simply because they're old and we got a long history of people going to theaters to watch them. Put one on television, and the number of people who will watch that play, and it'll be far less than what you'd get to watch original dramatists of today and their material. It's often more or relevant, but the number of people who would watch even that program would exceed all the people who have ever seen the play in live performance in the hundreds of years since it's existed. Now, it's pretty hard to put down an audience of 10 million people. That's a lot of folks. It may be a bad rating in terms of what you'd get for Heehaw or Bonanza, but it still fills an awful lot of football stadiums. Just take public broadcasting, for example. Tom Shales: The Nixon Administration's first request for the public broadcasting corporation was for an amount of money, which as a proportion of gross national product was about 1% of what the British and the Japanese spend on public broadcasting. People who put down a lot of the public broadcasting programming, I often ask them, "Well, are you prepared to spend for that programming even a fraction of what you spend on commercial programming, because until you are, of course, it's not going to look the same. It's going to be hard to compete." But now we spend 50 to $60 billion a year in this country on education, and I gather, gladly, there's not any great protest against what we're spending on our children's education. Tom Shales: Yet most of our children are getting a far more education from television than they are from schools, and it seems to me we ought to be able to just spend at least 1% of that amount on public broadcasting. That'd be a budget around $500 million a year. That's not an excessive sum. It's about what Mel Laird spends on coffee every year, I suspect. It's not a great deal of money for this country, and the results would be fantastic. It wouldn't give us a system that's better than the Japanese system, but it would at least bring us up to the point where we becoming closer to what other leading nations in the civilized world are doing with television. Then I think we would really have given public broadcasting a chance, and we'd be in a position to really compare ...