"Television belongs to everyone": The Life, Vision, and Legacy of Kentuckian Julian Goodman

In his 1983 letter to fellow retired television executive Julian Goodman (formerly president and chairman of the board of NBC) regarding Goodman's testimony in favor of a resolution (S. Res. 66) advocating radio and television coverage of Senate floor debates, former CBS president Frank Stanton summed up what he saw as Goodman's uniquely effective qualities.¹ "You are the industry's perfect witness for this legislation," Stanton wrote. "Just the right mixture of sensible reasoning, anecdotal charm, and Kentucky fried chicken."² Stanton's characterization perfectly captures the combination that made Julian Goodman such a success at the highest levels of television for well over two decades and one of the most influential Kentuckians of the twentieth century.³ Goodman spent his entire thirty-four-year career with NBC and was, in the words of his son Jeffrey, "perhaps one of the last mailroom-to-boardroom stories."⁴ Entering the field of broadcast journalism in 1946, a time in the United States when there were only six television broadcast stations and 8,000 homes with television sets, approximately .02 percent of all households, his career paralleled the rise of the medium to hegemonic dominance of the global media landscape. When Goodman retired in 1979, there were 724 commercial stations in the United States and 74.5 million television households, comprising almost 98 percent of all households.⁵

Along with his involvement with many pioneering "firsts" in broadcasting outlined in this article, Goodman should also be remembered for the central role he played in key moments and developments in television and American culture from the "Great Debates" of 1960 between presidential candidates John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, to the rise to prominence of such disparate cultural forces as Star Trek and the National Football League (NFL). Above all, Goodman's importance is rooted in his outspoken championing of the First Amendment rights of broadcast television as part of a free press at a time when, like today, those rights were under assault by both the presidential administration and, less directly, by large swaths of the public.

Throughout his career Goodman successfully marshalled his small-town Kentucky origins—that he effectively associated with a self-deprecating persona—to advance not only himself and his company but, more significantly, his vision of network television as an essential public good that should not just entertain but should inform and broaden the perspectives of the American people. In so doing, he argued as NBC president in the late 1960s, it could help bind the nation together during one of the most tumultuous times in its history.⁶ Goodman's vision of television as a "public servant" was in part a product of the history of broadcasting in the United States. The 1927 federal Radio Act, which established the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), and its successor, the 1933 Communication Act, which created its replacement, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), established the principle that although broadcasting companies should be private, the broadcast airwaves were public. Stations, therefore, would be federally regulated and licensed and must, to some degree, serve the "public interest" by maintaining public decency standards and offering at least some "minority" programming that was less commercially viable. Beginning in the 1940s, this commitment to regulated public airwaves extended to television broadcasting as well.⁷ More specifically, Goodman's view was a product of his Kentucky upbringing rooted in public education and working at newspapers that served their local communities, and a booming postwar America characterized by the largely unquestioned legitimacy of institutions, both public and private. It was also part and parcel of a national media landscape of only three television networks that together formed a powerful oligopoly and whose top executives held much greater cultural sway than their later counterparts. Like Goodman, they were widely quoted in the press and on television itself, and consistently presented their medium as a vital American institution essential for democracy and the free flow of ideas.

Such a view and the unquestioned influence of network executives, however, came under increasing attack in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the face of domestic political upheaval, a controversial war in Vietnam, and a growing sense that "the media" was both biased and overly influential, all views strongly encouraged by then President Richard Nixon and his administration. Goodman aggressively countered these claims and sought to use his "middle of the country" Kentucky identity to offset charges that television, and especially television news, was dominated by Northeastern elites wholly out of touch with "real" America. Nonetheless, such criticisms persisted and spread even though, beginning in the early 1970s, the unrivaled reach and influence of the three major networks began to steadily decline. Increasing competition from cable and other media forced the networks to adopt an even more narrow-casting approach to programming decisions designed to attract carefully segmented valuable demographics of viewers. As more and more cable channels were created over the next decade and a half, rising from four in 1974 to 74 by 1991, the network's overall percentage of television audience plummeted from 91 percent in 1976 to 61 percent by 1991. Goodman's somewhat untimely replacement and retirement in the late 1970s closely corresponded with this shift from the "classic network era" to a new "multi-channel era." This moment marked, therefore, not just the end of his long television career, but also the end of the prominence of his vision of television as a "public good" aimed at a vast undifferentiated audience and the rise to dominance of a narrower view of television as a money-making entertainer targeting an ever-more segmented society.⁸

Marshalling a "Kentucky" Persona

Julian Byrn Goodman was fundamentally shaped by his smalltown rural roots in southcentral Kentucky. He was born May 1, 1922 in Glasgow, the youngest of three boys of Charles Austin Goodman and Clara Franklin Goodman, both of Fountain Run.⁹ His family origins in the region stretched back much further. John Jacob Goodman (1784-1880), his great-great-great grandfather, settled the area that became Fountain Run, and had two wives who bore him thirty-two children. As a result, as Goodman later quipped, "most of this area is populated with Goodmans, or Goodmans under another name."¹⁰ These Goodman offspring included his prominent first cousins, Dero Downing, president of Western Kentucky University (WKU) from 1960 to 1979, with whom he attended that same college, at the time known as Western Kentucky State Teachers College WKSTC), and Dero's brother, world-renowned abstract artist Joseph Downing. Goodman would maintain a strong connection to Fountain Run, Glasgow and Bowling Green throughout his life. He and his wife of sixty-six years, Betty Sue Davis, regularly attended large family reunions of the Goodman clan held in the Fountain Run cemetery grounds.¹¹

Goodman's subsequent view of his career as a public calling was also deeply impacted by his years at WKSTC, which he attended from 1939 to 1943, and coming of age in the era of World War II, a time of widespread commitment to public service. Throughout his later life, Goodman praised the teachers at WKSTC who had taught him to write and think critically about the world, including professors Gordon Wilson, Robert Cornett, and W. M. Willey.¹² Above all, he developed a life-long friendship and admiration for Frances Richards, who established and was faculty advisor for the College Heights Herald student newspaper that Goodman wrote for during his time at WKSTC. Goodman left college in 1943 to enlist in the U.S. Army but never saw combat due to what he referred to in a letter at the time as "G.I. pneumonia," but he still managed to write to Richards repeatedly during his convalescence in a hospital at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana.¹³ He asked her for back copies of the student paper and shared his hopes and fears about the war. After he was discharged by the army, he recovered quickly and shortly thereafter moved to Washington. Through the help of his friend William W. Vaughn, he took a position with the Combined Production and Resources Board (of the War Productions Board) summarizing hundreds of pages of production reports of multiple Allied countries.¹⁴ He later stated that learning how to distill information to its essentials was of vital importance to his future career in television journalism and management.¹⁵

Goodman had no exact plans at this time. He wrote to Richards, exhibiting a youthful uncertainty and naiveté, that he decided to come to Washington after leaving the army because "I was somewhat bewildered when I was at home this summer, so I just hopped on a train and this is where I got off." "I guess I'll get on another one someday," he concluded the letter, "but I don't know where I'll get off."¹⁶ But the patterns of his future life and work soon solidified. Within the next couple years, he met and married his wife Betty, who worked under him as part of the secretarial pool at the War Productions Board, and whose father edited the Dawson Springs Progress, the newspaper of Dawson Springs, Kentucky. Goodman took night classes at George Washington University eventually earning a degree in economics in 1948 and was hired as a radio news writer at WRC, NBC's Washington bureau. The man who hired him, William (Bill) McAndrew, became a long-time colleague and friend and central to Goodman's rise up the corporate ladder. A decade and a half later, as then president of NBC News, McAndrew brought Goodman up to New York to serve as his vice president of news and public affairs. Five years later, Goodman leapfrogged McAndrew to become president of all of NBC. His friendship with another WRC employee was equally long lasting and significant. His first supervisor at WRC was David Brinkley who quickly had Goodman replace him on the night desk so he could move on to a day job announcing the news. Goodman more than returned the favor a decade later, by being one of the individuals responsible for bringing Brinkley together with another reporter for NBC's coverage of the 1956 Republican Convention, thus launching the famous duo of Chet Huntley and Brinkley.¹⁷

Unlike the character Don Draper (played by Jon Hamm) from the influential AMC series Mad Men who attempts to erase his rural humble origins and totally remake his persona, Goodman never denied his small-town Kentucky roots as he began his rapid rise up the NBC corporate ladder. Indeed, he emphasized them in ways that clearly furthered him professionally and socially and that became a regular part of the press coverage of his advance. The expression of such local boosterism is to be expected, and indeed the Glasgow newspaper The Republican highlighted that his "grass roots, both paternally and maternally . . . are in abundance and buried deep" and had served him well.¹⁸ Yet national press accounts of his rapid success also emphasized his connection to the state and played off what were seen as generally positive associations of Kentucky with a genteel lifestyle and "good breeding."¹⁹ An undated article on Goodman from the Detroit journal The Adcrafter described him as "relaxed as a thoroughbred grazing in a field of his home-state, Kentucky. His delivery is as smooth as good bourbon." Such traits, the article continues, destroy the standard image of television corporate executives as "elderly, fat, bald, pompous network dinosaurs." Rather, Goodman "is a husky, handsome six-footer whose soft, southern warmth seasons his Manhattan manner."²⁰ Likewise, an extensive 1966 article in Sponsor profiled Goodman as "a Kentuckian by birth . . . if not by speech, although there's still a little Bluegrass in his voice—and a great big dollop of southern hyperbole and wit." The author further noted that just as "Kentuckians are ever dedicated to improvement of the breed" so Goodman was "entrenched in constant self- and associate-improvement."²¹ As the Sponsor writer recognized, all these comments on his softly mannered Southern ways did not happen by accident. Goodman was very cognizant of the advantages of such a persona and worked assiduously to advance this folksy vision of the small-town man who moved to the big city and big-money positions but never really left home.

One way Goodman achieved this end was through his continual use of self-deprecating humor. He used this practice to stress his understanding of the need to "not get above your raising" and to reduce the distance between his immense clout as a television executive and the broader public or local audiences to whom he spoke. His favorite story, one he repeated so many times that his willingness to retell it became a running joke, equally blended the ideas of career success and the need to maintain small-town Americana humility. He never tired of recounting how, in 1966, when he excitedly phoned his father back in Glasgow to tell him that he had been named president of NBC, the elder Goodman replied that he was very proud of him but that "he had to hang up quickly and rush off" because there was a mule sale downtown "and they only have those once every three weeks." Later that day, Goodman recounted, his father admitted to some friends that "he didn't really need another mule" but "I didn't want Julian to feel uppity." Goodman was so enamored with this story, and told it so many times and in so many iterations, that on his note cards for one speech he simply jotted down "mule story"—"which one?"²² It also remained fresh in the minds of many who heard it, such as the president of a Seattle affiliate who wrote Goodman upon his retirement from NBC, "if I meet your Dad 'up yonder' (a highly unlikely probability—for me not him) I'll tell him 'Julian never got uppity!'"²³ Another example of his slyly congratulatory self-deprecation was when he received an ex post facto degree from WKU in 1975 along with the Distinguished Alumnus Award and the College Heights Herald award. In his speech later that day to the Kentucky Broadcasters Association, Goodman kidded that due to the interference caused by World War II, he never actually earned all the credits to graduate from WKSTC so his accomplishment "just goes to show that anyone who works hard enough and waits long enough can get a degree—if the college's president happens to be his cousin. ²⁴

Although Goodman recognized the professional advantages of "playing Kentucky," his polished "aw shucks" stories and persona were not just an act. He remained a true and loyal son of the state throughout his life and visited it often while he was president of the network. In a 1972 feature article in the Glasgow Daily Times, he stressed, "I think everyone in Glasgow knows that I still call it home." Likewise, speaking before the Paducah Chamber of Conference in 1980 and responding indirectly to a then recent Louisville Courier–Journal profile of him that had stated "It's a long way from the Banker's Trust Building down to Glasgow, Ky" he retorted, "It really isn't if you keep your lines out to Kentucky and if you have the kind of family I have."²⁵ He certainly did keep these "lines out," giving numerous speeches at his alma mater WKU and throughout the state, but also by repeatedly encouraging the Today show to book Kentucky personalities and government officials. These included long-time national war correspondent Arthur Krock, Louisville Courier-Journal and Louisville Times executive editor Norman E. Isaacs, and the incoming governor of the state in 1974, Julian Carroll. When the Today show in 1976 ran a "Bicentennial salute" series to each state, he urged the executive vice president of Orion Broadcasting in Louisville to "[o] ff the record," "let me know directly if there's anything you think isn't going right in TODAY's coverage of Kentucky."²⁶ He thus used his position of influence to ensure that the state was presented in the best possible light and to promote its importance.

Another way he kept his connections to Kentucky strong was through his long association with the group "Kentuckians of New York," a social organization of ex-patriate Kentuckians living and working in New York City, usually in the high levels of corporate and professional offices. Goodman joined soon after arriving in New York and remained active in the group long after he had left NBC. He was named "Kentuckian of the Year" by the group in 1970 and was elected its president in 1979. The group's stated goals were simple—to enjoy food and drink from the Commonwealth and to celebrate, in a humorous way, all things Kentucky. For instance, the opening prayer that Goodman keep a handwritten copy of stated in part, "Keep us mindful, that not everybody can be from Kentucky, and to be tolerant; that not everybody, forgive them, can even understand its special grace."²⁷ Beyond such lighthearted celebration of the state, he also saw his active participation as a valuable opportunity to meet and greet fellow movers and shakers in the business world and to solidify ties with important figures back in the Commonwealth, including governors, university presidents, and other significant cultural figures.

Balancing the Life of the Elite with Small-Town Americana

As his "mule story" makes clear, Goodman both saw himself as a sort of everyman who never lost touch with his humble roots and recognized the public relations value of presenting himself in this way. He was eager to let it be known when he was interviewed after being named president of NBC, for instance, that "I am not an ambitious man," and he took pride in the fact that he never once asked for a raise or a promotion.²⁸ He started at WRC at a low salary by industry standards; so low in fact that in 1950, NBC News executives in New York worried that he might leave for CBS if he was not paid more than his current $450 a month. Even when he was named vice president of NBC News and moved to New York in 1959, his salary was still a relatively modest $38,000 annually.²⁹ Still, within a decade, he was making substantially more and living the elite life of a top business executive, with a large home in the affluent Westchester suburb of Larchmont, New York, memberships in two prestigious country clubs in New York and Washington, regular meals at fine restaurants at the University Club and the Board Room, and even visits to an exclusive "beauty resort" in San Diego. As a reporter and then an executive, he met with every president from Harry Truman to Jimmy Carter and was invited to White House ceremonial receptions for visiting dignitaries such as the president of Romania.³⁰ Perhaps the clearest evidence of the rarified lifestyle Goodman led was his long-standing friendship with the notoriously extravagant Iranian Ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi who once hosted a black-tie dinner in Goodman's honor at the Iranian Embassy and routinely sent him expensive gifts at Christmas and the Fourth of July, including a silver Cartier cocktail shaker and tins of Beluga caviar.³¹

Further, for all his commitment to Kentucky and all his talk of Glasgow as home, he never lived in the state again after 1944, even after he left NBC. Upon his retirement, he wrote back to a fellow executive, "Some people from Glasgow just called me and wanted to know if I'm coming back to run the farm I own there. I don't think so. My spirits are both high and free, and I'm looking forward to the future."³² The Goodmans spent the next decade in the New York area and then retired to Jupiter, Florida in 1988. Nonetheless, despite his at times sophisticated lifestyle, Goodman seemed always able to balance his two worlds both personally and professionally. Through his consistent trips back to the state to give speeches and to visit family, his active engagement with Kentucky-focused organizations both in the state and New York, and his use of self-effacing and humorous anecdotes to remind the reading and viewing public of his small-town upbringing, he avoided, at least for a time, public criticisms of effete urban elitism and instead promoted a comforting sense of "local boy made good."

From the Rose Garden to the NFL and Star Trek: Developing Television and American Culture

Goodman began his career in radio broadcasting in 1945 at a time when television was just beginning to emerge and when most politicians saw broadcast coverage as a cumbersome intrusion rather than a political asset. He played an important part in helping transform this understanding, promoting the medium of radio and then television as wholly the equal of print media, and personally mastering the rapidly changing technology that would allow more direct and more rapid coverage of national policymakers. As a result, he was part of many broadcasting "firsts" that transformed the reporting of news in ways that are now taken for granted by the viewing public. For instance, in 1948, as an NBC radio news writer, he convinced the very reluctant chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Congressman Charles Eaton, to allow live radio coverage of the "Greek-Turkish Aid Bill" that developed from the famed Truman Doctrine foreign aid request. Goodman later recalled that he rode up and down repeatedly in the elevator with Eaton until he finally consented. Goodman proudly noted this marked the "first live coverage the American people ever had of a congressional committee in action."³³ As this article's opening quote by Stanton attests, this was the beginning of a career-long quest to have all official congressional proceedings televised and the origins of today's Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (CSPAN) coverage of hearings and floor debates. That same year, Goodman was also instrumental in initiating live audio and then visual recordings of presidential talks from the White House Rose Garden. President Harry Truman was initially very skeptical of their value, Goodman later recalled, but after Truman allowed television coverage on one occasion, "we (at NBC) encountered such a steady succession of Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Four-H Clubs, and Kansas City World War One reunions that I finally had to beg for mercy and suggest they keep him out of the Rose Garden for a few days to let us rest."³⁴

His initiatives continued as Goodman made a seamless transition from radio to television. He later told an interviewer, "television sort of slipped in—I can't really recall it came with a great flash—it just sort of grew."³⁵ Over time, Goodman participated in a series of "firsts," which included overseeing the first use of audio tape in coverage of a presidential convention, helping to arrange for the first televised presidential news conference, and overseeing NBC's coverage of President Dwight Eisenhower's second inaugural parade. Citing Goodman's expertise, television reporter Laurence Laurent wrote at the time, somewhat breathlessly, that the new technology allowed the networks to show images of the parade to "startled viewers . . . within an hour" of the event itself.³⁶ Persisting in his goal of providing as close to live as possible television coverage of all major events, by 1961, Goodman was pioneering what he dubbed "instant news specials," which were documentary programs aired within hours of the events they were about. That same year he also oversaw the development of an NBC electronic news service designed to transmit taped film coverage from the network to its affiliates so they could splice national coverage into their local news programs. By 1965, seventy-five stations were subscribers.³⁷

Yet Goodman's historical significance extends far beyond pioneering essential television technologies and political coverage. He was in fact a prominent player in NBC's coverage of all the momentous political and cultural events of the 1960s, from civil rights marches, to political conventions, to the space race and moon landing. He was perhaps most proud of two defining televised events: the first was producing the second of the "Great Debates" between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy in the presidential campaign of 1960—an event viewed by more Americans than any other up until that time, and NBC's coverage of the Kennedy assassination and funeral.³⁸ Goodman was in charge of every aspect of the broadcast of the second "Great Debate" from meticulously overseeing the set construction, to fighting off what he saw as unfair demands of Kennedy staffers. As he later noted, the day before the debate, he had to resist their insistence that he raise the temperature of the studio above seventy degrees, which he saw as an obvious effort to cause candidate Nixon to noticeably perspire just as he had in the first debate two weeks earlier. His handling of the debate won him many plaudits for professionalism and even-handedness.³⁹ Three years later, he was also largely responsible for NBC's coverage of the Kennedy assassination and funeral, including the network's decision to stay on the air throughout the night of November 24, 1963 and to show, without any voice over, the steady procession of mourners walking past the casket of the slain president. Goodman was proud of this decision and felt it had a "calming effect" on a badly shaken nation and later scholars seem to concur about its lasting impact.⁴⁰

Although most of Goodman's significant contributions were tied to news broadcasting and he always saw himself first and foremost as a "newsman," once he moved to New York to become a top executive, he became responsible for more of the programming on the network. Many of his daily practices differed little from competing network executives, but in at least two cases, his decisions were particularly forward-thinking and made lasting contributions to central forces in American culture. The first was his instrumental role in establishing the financial basis for the modern NFL. In the mid-1960s, the eight-team American Football League (AFL) was unable to compete with the more established and better funded twelve-team NFL. According to Goodman, shortly after NBC lost its contract for NCAA football to ABC in 1963, he pitched a proposal at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington to his fellow NBC executive president Bob Kintner and vice president for NBC News William McAndrew to pursue a ten-year contract with the AFL at a substantially higher rate than the league's current contract with CBS. His plan was to "give them a lot of money, give them more money than they were worth, that would allow them to pay their football players so they could be competitive with the NFL."⁴¹ The five-year, $36 million deal to broadcast their games that NBC eventually signed with the AFL on January 29, 1964 allowed AFL teams to pay much higher salaries than they had previously, particularly to star players such as Joe Namath of the New York Jets.⁴² As a result, within a few years the league reached parity with the NFL and the two leagues merged into a consolidated NFL in 1970 and started a rapid ascent to American sports hegemony. Writing to Goodman at the end of 1969, William H. Sullivan, Jr., owner of the AFL's Boston Patriots, acknowledged, "there can be no doubt that the turning point in the history of our League and, indeed, in professional football" was NBC's willingness to bid "in a manner which enabled our teams to compete" with the NFL teams "and eventually to bring about the merger of the Leagues." The AFL funding scheme also made NBC and its affiliates a great deal of money in the short run. One affiliate station owner wrote to Goodman after the shocking Super Bowl III victory of the AFL's New York Jets over the NFL's Baltimore Colts, "It has been a few years since the down payment was made, but the mortgage burning party was sensational."⁴³

For all his importance in helping make the Super Bowl and a merged NFL possible, however, what Goodman is unfortunately best remembered for regarding football is his role in the infamous November 17, 1968 "Heidi Game" between the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets. The broadcast was cut off one minute before it ended, with the Jets leading by three, to show the highly hyped, made-for-TV movie The New Adventures of Heidi that NBC was contractually obligated to air starting exactly at seven o'clock. In the last few minutes of the game, as the NBC switchboard lit up with irate football fans fearing the game would be cut off, Goodman at his home in Larchmont ordered the game be kept on the air but, because of the high volume of calls, his order could not be delivered to the main control room. He and his NBC personnel could only look on helplessly as the game ended off the air and spectacularly with the Raiders scoring two touchdowns in the last minute to win the game 43 to 32. Afterwards, Goodman immediately apologized for the miscue, stating it was "a forgivable error committed by humans who were concerned about children expecting to see Heidi," and ordered that special hot lines to the control studio be installed. Nonetheless, he was roundly criticized for his decisions by the press and the public (he kept one protest letter from that time addressed to him that simply said in large bold letters, "DROP DEAD!") and his association with this "debacle" was featured prominently in all his obituaries.⁴⁴ Ironically, and reflecting his careful attention to every detail of broadcasting, Goodman had been well aware of this possibility and had written the head of sports programming, Carl Lindemann, Jr., less than two months earlier about another AFL contest. "[T]hat was a close call in getting the game off on time, and it makes me nervous about the future occasions," he warned, adding, "Is there nothing that can be done, short of interfering with the orderly process of football itself, to give us a little more leeway?" There is no record of Lindemann's reply.⁴⁵

Goodman's second major lasting contribution to popular culture involved his keeping Star Trek on the air despite its chronically low viewership numbers. It is easy to forget that the original series only lasted from 1966 into 1969 and its ratings were middling at best.⁴⁶ The fact the show survived as long as it did was due in part to the show's bright graphics that helped NBC's parent company Radio Corporation of America (RCA) sell more color TVs. It also attracted a small but intensely dedicated and highly educated audience that launched the first major letter-writing campaign by fans to keep a show on the air.⁴⁷ But another important factor was the commitment to the show of Goodman himself who was well aware of the passionate fan base and their potential value to advertisers.⁴⁸ In a 1967 letter to Washington Star television critic Bernie Harrison, Goodman sought to assure him and his fellow fans. "You and your readers can stop worrying," he wrote. "I like it too and so do many millions of others. We definitely plan to have it back on our schedule in the fall."⁴⁹ Goodman was also credited with keeping it on the air into a third season because he recognized that "it draws more mail from upper educated viewers than any other program on NBC."⁵⁰ His vision here was an early example of reimagining a valuable television show not just as one that appealed to the most possible viewers across the entire demographic spectrum but also as one that attracted younger, more passionate, and prosperous viewers. Such an approach would become increasingly commonplace in the following decade. Although the show was eventually cancelled in 1969, it stayed on the air for just the requisite amount of time to be eligible for syndication and its fan base grew over the ensuing decade as programs were repeatedly re-aired.

Eating, Sleeping, and Breathing Television

Goodman's close awareness of the Star Trek audience is just one indicator of the intensity with which he followed television practically every waking moment. When Goodman was named executive vice president of all divisions of NBC in January 1966, he stressed to reporters that he had no intention of following the path of previous presidents who, in one writer's words, had been "ruined, exhausted, and broken" by the grueling demands on network executives. "I have four children," Goodman announced at an informal breakfast meeting with the television press, "and I am not going to let this job make a stranger of me to them."⁵¹ Yet in short order, Goodman was eating, sleeping, and breathing television. A report of some years later emphasized that Goodman not only had three sets in his office, so that he could simultaneously watch all three networks' offerings, but he also had the same arrangement in his home. The reporter marveled, "there is one set in his bathroom to watch while he shaves, [and] another in his car to watch on his way to the office." "Goodman watches more TV than say, any television critic I ever heard of," he continued, making him "invulnerable to the frequent suggestion that TV would be a lot better if TV executives were somehow forced to watch it themselves."⁵²

His continual awareness of what was airing on not only his network but those of his competitors is evident in his constant memos to network staff, often pertaining to news-related coverage, on small details other executives might have missed. On the day after televised coverage of the second Vietnam draft lottery in 1970, for instance, Goodman sent a memo to NBC News head Reuven Frank that ABC's coverage "outdid us" and "their visuals had the value of being readable" compared to NBC's verbal information only.⁵³ Two months earlier he chastised Frank for not sufficiently knowing what news stories would be aired on NBC's Today show. "It is absolutely vital that the people in NBC News directly responsible for the supervision of TODAY be able to look at it every day," he stressed.⁵⁴ Certainly Goodman was a daily viewer of Today. On one occasion, he whipped off a memo to Frank that the local weather report insert had announced it was "67 and cloudy" when in fact "it had been raining madly for half an hour."⁵⁵ In another case, although he was half a world away, he sent a special memo from his hotel in Tokyo praising the show's coverage of the 1977 Los Angeles blackout.⁵⁶ Goodman also fully recognized that he would have to make vital decisions even when he was out of the office, once writing Frank that he should be ready to interrupt regular programming "if the hijacking story," referring to the hijacking of airlines by the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, "really comes to a climax Saturday night." "I will be at home and hope you will keep in close touch with me by telephone," he insisted.⁵⁷ Although accounts of other network executives suggest that his constant attention to what was on the tube at all hours was not entirely unique, it nonetheless reveals the degree to which he was committed not just to maximizing profits but to ensuring what NBC aired was accurate and timely.

His intense scrutiny of what was being broadcast at all times did clearly take a toll, as even Goodman acknowledged. Just over a year after he had publicly stressed how he intended to keep his work life in check, he told a television reporter that his daily schedule involved arriving at work at 8:30am and leaving at 6:30pm "on a normal day" but he added "there aren't many normal days." "I carry work home at night, and I work at home over the weekends," he continued. "I try to go home every night, but I don't always make it." Asked about hobbies, Goodman lamented, "I play golf very infrequently, and badly. . . . I love horse races, but I only talk about it. I hardly ever go. Mostly my hobby is looking at television, which I do almost all the time."⁵⁸ His wife Betty also recognized the price they had paid for his career, stating in a 1966 Louisville Courier-Journal interview that, given how hard her father had worked as a small-town Kentucky newspaper editor, she promised herself that she'd "never marry a newspaperman. . . . So I didn't—I married something worse. My husband works even harder than newspaper people."⁵⁹

Promoting Television as a "Public Good" for All

This constant attention to what was on the air is evidence, of course, of a continual concern about maintaining the highest possible ratings and surpassing those of the other networks, but his primary motivation for devoting so many hours to watching television programming was his deep commitment to the idea of television as a public service. As he reiterated in numerous speeches and interviews, Goodman viewed television as "the most powerful instrument for change the world has ever known."⁶⁰ He felt that this was not just another corporate industry but rather a national, even global force for democratic good that in some sense should belong to all. He spelled out this vision most clearly in a speech before the Hollywood Radio and Television Society in 1970. "Television belongs to everyone," he told his audience, "and everyone has a claim on it—the young, the old, the middle-aged; highbrows, lowbrows, middlebrows and raised-brows; liberals, conservatives; southerners, northerners, easterners, westerners; the poor, the comfortable, the rich. Out of all these different and sometimes conflicting groups, television has built the greatest audience coalition of all times."⁶¹ Although reflecting heartfelt belief, this speech was also in part intended as a counter-response to the long-standing critique by media critics, politicians, and public and private "watchdog" groups that too much of television was devoted to mindless violence or inanity. This view was best summed up a decade earlier by FCC chairman Newton Minow who famously lamented in 1961 to a National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) audience that with a few notable exceptions television was "a vast wasteland" of "game 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 . . . . endlessly, commercials. . . . and most of all, boredom."⁶² Minow's speech stunned the NAB membership and made him a household name overnight.⁶³ Yet although all three networks struggled to include more public affair programs, documentaries, and high end dramas, what Minow described remained the bulk of network programming throughout the coming decade.

To a degree, throughout his tenure at NBC, Goodman publicly rejected the idea that television needed to cater to elite tastes and serious subjects all the time. "I believe there's a valid place in the schedule for light entertainment, heavy entertainment, serious non-fiction, and light non-fiction, in varying proportions (more of the light, less of the heavy)," he sent in a memo to a fellow executive in 1967.⁶⁴ Further, as network president, he certainly authorized numerous programs that many would characterize as "low brow" or "lowest common denominator" shows, and made few apologies for such decisions. "There's a place for 'Laverne and Shirley' on TV," he told a reporter shortly after retiring from NBC.⁶⁵ Yet just as clearly, Goodman shared many of Minow's concerns and ideals. In stark contrast to his immediate predecessor at rival network CBS, James Aubrey, who as network president (1959–1965) relentlessly pursued high ratings by promoting "broads, bosums, and fun," Goodman believed television was capable of more than base entertainment and he consistently tried throughout his career to promote more hard-hitting journalism shows and innovative and artistic programming.⁶⁶ While still at NBC's Washington bureau, for example, he helped launch an in-depth and barebones news discussion program called Comment. It has "no gimmicks"—no "film clips, pictures, diagrams, maps, or music" he proudly told a television reporter; "we take one man and let him talk before one camera."⁶⁷ A few years later he produced The New American Culture, a program of cultural commentary featuring literary critics, including the consultant on poetry and literature to the Library of Congress as well as Columbia University professor Charles Van Doren.⁶⁸ After he was brought up to the New York corporate office, he created World Wide '60 that he described as "unabashedly a public affairs series. . . . serious treatment of serious subjects" and that was scheduled against CBS's Gunsmoke and ABC's The Lawrence Welk Show. "Challenge to Guns and Fiddles" headlined a newspaper article in explicitly cultural and class terms about this bold attempt to promote intellectual primetime programming.⁶⁹

Goodman's commitment to more challenging television continued during his tenure as NBC president. According to the minutes from his first meeting in his new role with affiliate station presidents at the annual NBC Board of Delegates meeting, he stressed that NBC would continue to present "specials of great artistic merit and high cultural levels in prime viewing periods" because it was "an important responsibility [they] . . . must continue to shoulder."⁷⁰ That same year, he took the opportunity of a commencement address at his alma mater, WKU, to announce a new experimental theater series designed to showcase unknown but dynamic writers "who have not been able to find their way into the medium."⁷¹ Three years later he tried again to promote artistically ambitious television by calling for independent film makers worldwide to submit their work for airing on NBC. "NBC would seek out 'the Fellinis, the Truffauts and the Tony Richardsons of tomorrow's television and motion picture screens" stated the accompanying press release.⁷² At a time when network television was dominated by farcical rural-based situation comedies and paint-by-numbers westerns, his proposal to air avant garde independent films was somewhat daring.

Perhaps most striking and unusual were his efforts to move away from the endless ratings battle between the three networks and towards the goal of all three promoting the idea of television as a collective good. Goodman remained committed to outpacing his rivals at ABC and CBS, yet he clearly was irritated by the widespread denigration of television and recognized the inefficiencies and negative implications of the constant struggle for ratings points and advertising dollars. Speaking to a meeting of television affiliates in 1970, he reiterated his view that "I am opposed to exploiting fractional rating differences for narrow promotional purposes. I'm against helping our detractors claim that television is only a scramble for meaningless numbers."⁷³ At times, he even actively promoted more cooperation that would spotlight the cultural benefits of the medium as a whole. For example, bucking the practice of not ever acknowledging the other networks' offerings, he gained attention that same year when he ordered a series of one-minute on-air promotions on NBC of "outstanding programs" on the competing networks. "I thought we should alert the selective viewer about the good things that are on television—not just N.B.C.—and see what happens," he told the press.⁷⁴ In 1988, after he had retired, Goodman publicly revisited the idea of network cooperation, calling for the three networks to bid collectively and share coverage of the Olympics to ensure greater viewer accessibility at lower costs. He wrote in an editorial that such a joint bidding effort had almost come to pass for the 1980 Moscow Olympics but broke down, and he strongly argued that such an undertaking should be attempted again if allowed by the Justice Department.⁷⁵

Nonetheless, despite all these innovative efforts to promote more cooperation and more high-minded or artistic programming that would raise the prestige of television in the public's mind and help it fulfill his vision of a vital public service, Goodman later lamented that little of it came to pass. His highbrow news and cultural programs did not last long and there is no evidence that his promotion of other networks' "outstanding programs" was reciprocated. He acknowledged in his 1966 WKU commencement address that "experimentation is not easy in network television where each network presents a half-million dollars' worth of programming each evening, where advertiser support is the only source of revenue for the whole enterprise and where the penalty of failure is so enormous," but he remained publicly optimistic at the time that such experimentation was possible.⁷⁶ In a 1979 interview after he had left NBC, however, he was far less sanguine. Responding to a reporter's question to what extent he had been able to bring to the home viewer the "quality, innovative programs" he had desired to, Goodman sighed. "Not nearly enough." "The incentives to do better commercially are far greater than the rewards for doing a good program," he lamented.⁷⁷

Defending the First Amendment and "the public's right to see"

If Goodman had limited success in changing the lowest common denominator nature of television programming in even incremental ways, he had more success in defending his vision of television as a public good in other arenas. Indeed, Goodman's most significant contribution to this ideal was his stalwart, even courageous, championing of the First Amendment rights of the press, especially the electronic media, in the face of a rising tide of conservative criticism against the supposed biases of televised news coverage. This hostility traces back as least as far as former President Eisenhower's speech at the 1964 Republican convention when his description of the media as "people who couldn't care less about the good of our party" was greeted by "a deafening roar" from the convention audience as delegates "shook their fists at those in the glassed-in television booths."⁷⁸ Such a view that television reporting was liberally biased and therefore untrustworthy continued to escalate throughout the decade as television cameras presented and newsmen reported on a steady diet of disquieting events from uprisings in inner cities and college campuses, to confrontations between police and protestors, to the ongoing horrors of the Vietnam War. It crescendoed in the aftermath of the chaotic 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago during which television cameras captured what was later officially deemed a "police riot" as protestors chanted "the whole world is watching," numerous reporters were beaten, and Mayor Richard J. Daley publicly demanded an hour of prime time to respond to what he denounced as blatantly biased reporting.⁷⁹ Reuven Frank later concluded that this was a time when network news "lost its innocence" and "the era of trust was over."⁸⁰ From that point forward, the belief that television cameras were a distorting intrusion that needed to be carefully controlled grew ever more commonplace.

As pressure to restrict what live events television cameras could film and what television editorialists should say mounted, Goodman sought to publicly defend unrestricted television press coverage as inseparable from freedom of speech and a free press. Efforts to control television coverage, he argued, were in actuality attempts to interfere with the public's right to essential information. "Censorship acts against the receiver, not the sender, of information," he told an international audience in April 1969. "Any action or threat against television's right to show," he warned, "are also actions and threats against the public's right to see. In all countries we have to fight vigorously for both these rights."⁸¹ He reiterated the same message a couple of months later in a widely-published news interview. "Television must be a servant," he stressed, "But in order to be a servant it must be free to serve. If television is restricted in any of its abilities—its usefulness is basically impaired." Goodman further argued that television should not be blamed for a cheapening and coarsening of American culture for it was simply the messenger that held up a mirror to world events and political responses. "If greatness is there," he concluded, "the television camera will record greatness; if triviality is there, then triviality is what will appear on the screen."⁸²

Despite his eloquence, none of these assurances by Goodman did much to assuage critics who saw the media as not only liberally biased in its reporting but also far too powerful a force for shaping public opinion. This view was most powerfully crystallized by Vice President Spiro Agnew later that fall in Des Moines at the Midwest Republican Conference. In an intentionally provocative speech that would reverberate across the media landscape, Agnew sharply criticized the reaction of network news commentators to President Nixon's recent nationally televised speech defending his policies in the ongoing Vietnam War. Denouncing what he labeled "instant analysis and querulous criticism" by "a small band of network commentators and self-appointed analysts," he fumed that "this little group of men . . . not only enjoy a right of instant rebuttal . . . but, more importantly, wield a free hand in selecting, presenting, and interpreting the great issues of our nation." "Perhaps it is time," he then asked, "that the networks were made more responsive to the views of the nation and more responsible to the people they serve" and he encouraged "the people" to "register their complaints on bias through mail to the networks and phone calls to local stations."⁸³

Beyond the fear of unprecedented power centralized in the hands of a small coterie of unelected newsmen and television executives, Agnew's charge also included a broader cultural criticism of "coastal elites" supposedly out of touch with those Americans in the "heartland," although he did not use these soon-to-be common and politically charged labels. Agnew emphasized that these network newsmen and executives all "live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of Washington, D.C. and New York City" and "do not—and I repeat, not—represent the views of America." Here geography stood in for a sense of both class privilege and ethnic and religious un-Americanness, rooted in part in the long-held claims that the media was "controlled" by Jews.⁸⁴ Indeed, after he resigned as vice president, Agnew made these claims explicit, suggesting in his 1976 novel The Canfield Decision that Jewish power brokers had excessive sway over both politics and the media. He confirmed in a Newsweek interview the idea that the press was overly influenced by "Zionist opinions" and when asked by a Washington Star reporter for examples, Agnew named names: "For example, CBS, Mr. [William] Paley's Jewish. And this is not said in a defamatory way. Mr. Julian Goodman, who runs NBC, there's a Mr. Leonard Goldenson at ABC." Adding Katherine Graham of the Washington Post and Arthur Sulzberger of the New York Times, he concluded, "how can these people be totally objective where Israel is concerned?"⁸⁵ Despite his given name, Goodman was, of course, not Jewish. The misstatement tellingly reveals how widening assumptions about cultural elites could trump Goodman's careful efforts to publicly promote his Kentucky identity.⁸⁶

Agnew's 1969 Des Moines speech had far greater importance than a one-off attack on the press. The release of internal White House memoranda by the Senate Watergate Committee in 1974 revealed that it was in fact the opening salvo in a systematic effort by the Nixon White House to discredit and harass those members of the national media that it deemed to be "anti-Administration."⁸⁷ In an early 1970 White House memo later made public, this strategy was further focused to concentrate on "mobilization of the Silent Majority . . . to pound the magazines and the networks in counter-action." The memo urged that this effort should, "concentrate . . . on the few places that count . . . NBC, TIME, NEWSWEEK and LIFE, the NEW YORK TIMES, and the WASHINGTON POST."⁸⁸ Whether Goodman's outspokenness was the reason NBC was the sole television network singled out is unclear; the Nixon administration inner circle also despised NBC news anchor Chet Huntley for his critical comments about President Nixon in Life magazine.⁸⁹ Goodman would soon face the full wrath of the administration and a fired up public.

Regardless of whether it reflected genuine popular outrage or was more the product of White House manipulation, the public response to Agnew's speech was immediate and unmistakable, as a sea of angry letters, cables, telegrams, and phone calls flooded NBC's corporate offices and affiliate stations, as well as those of the other networks. Combined, the three networks were inundated with 150,000 communications, with more than two to one in favor of Agnew.⁹⁰ Goodman immediately denounced the speech as "an appeal to prejudice" both in a press release and in a formal filmed statement aired during the NBC Evening News and concluded, "it is regrettable that the Vice President of the United States would deny to television freedom of the press."⁹¹ He also responded to many of these letters himself, particularly those that came from managers of NBC affiliates. One such typical exchange that preceded the vice president's speech by some months was with Don Dailey, vice president and general manager of KGBX in Springfield, Missouri. Dailey warned, that "It should be apparent that there are millions of people who believe that 90 percent of the television newsmen are ultra-liberal." After Goodman's assurances that his newsmen were fair and were perceived as both too far Left and too far Right only engendered even stronger refutations by Dailey, Goodman curtly concluded, "I'm sorry to find that we are in such complete disagreement."⁹² To another local station head who supported his position, Goodman acknowledged a week after Agnew's speech that "[t]he mail comes in daily, by the bushelful," with pro-Agnew letters "running well ahead of the others." Attempting to defuse the acrimony with his trademark self-effacement, he noted that he took pride that he had personally been called both "a 'stupid whippersnapper'" and "the author of a 'superb response, cool and crisp. ⁹³

But Goodman also went on the offensive, giving numerous speeches and making press announcements in which he hammered home the ideas that such public attacks constituted a grave threat to the constitutional right to a free press. As a Southern Baptist from Kentucky who routinely and publicly celebrated his rural and smalltown upbringing, Goodman felt he was well-positioned to stand up to charges of elitist northeastern bias and "un-Americanness." He tried various approaches to respond to this growing backlash against the media. In the draft of a speech he later gave to the Hollywood Radio and Television Society he considered using humor, joking that he "was a guest recently on the Spiro Agnew Show" and "received a 21 rating." Of the large volume of "fan mail" he received, he went on, his favorite was a telegram from someone from his hometown who wrote, "I listened to Vice President Agnew and then I listened to you. I can only say that I am ashamed I went to the same high school with you in Glasgow, Kentucky."⁹⁴ These lines were dropped from the formal version of the speech NBC later printed for distribution, which warned that the public's failure to understand that the issue is "not the right of the press to inform, but the right of the public to know" raised the "danger that fearful people will advocate the silencing of what they do not wish to hear." It was television's obligation, his speech concluded, to meet this threat head on for the medium was "too visible to shrink from view, too important to remain silent, too present throughout the land to be indifferent to its crises."⁹⁵ His most dramatic claim came in another speech a couple months later to the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation titled "The People, the Press, and the First Amendment." After tallying the numerous threats to the media from unfounded public critiques to "dragnet subpoenas" for press notes and demands on reporters to reveal their sources, Goodman concluded ominously "Not since 1798—when newsmen were sentenced to prison under the Sedition Act . . . has American journalism been under greater attack."⁹⁶ His words were reported in newspaper accounts around the country and drew the ire of Senator Barry Goldwater who called Goodman's claims, "one of the most ridiculous statements of the new decade." Goodman in turn replied in a separate letter that the threat to press freedom was real but that he in no way thought "the news media should be above the law."⁹⁷

Having tried humor and ominous warnings, Goodman even attempted to co-opt the rhetoric and tactics of his critics, stressing in a speech a month later that television had its "own silent majority—the great body of the population which gets its information and entertainment in the versatility and freedom of American broadcasting" and opined that "I think it's time television's silent majority became vocal."⁹⁸ Despite this effort to encourage network viewers to write to newspaper offices and local television stations in support of the networks, there is little evidence that many took him up on his offer. In fact, the charges of television bias were equally strong among some of the owners of affiliate stations as they were among the general viewing public. Reuven Frank recalls there was a "general revolt" against NBC News at the 1969 affiliates convention and at the 1970 affiliates meeting, a resolution that NBC News was "biased, unbalanced and unfair" was supported in a show of hands by 60 percent of the attendees.⁹⁹

In the face of ongoing blowback, Goodman continued forcefully championing television press freedom from what he characterized as government intrusion and harassment. According to Nixon administration memoranda, such harassment was indeed very real and involved numerous efforts to use government agencies from the FCC to the Internal Revenue Service. Lawrence Higby, assistant to White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, wrote to political operative Jeb Magruder in a confidential 1970 memo that their objective should be to "tear down the institution" of network news by discrediting its reporters and anchormen.¹⁰⁰ Goodman faced full force what he later characterized as "the viciousness of the White House attack." Charles Colson, Nixon "hatchet man" and special counsel to the president, visited Goodman's NBC office in September of 1970, part of a White House campaign to discourage the three networks from providing air time to Nixon opponents and to ensure positive news coverage.¹⁰¹ Colson later reported to Haldeman that the networks were "terribly nervous" and became "more accommodating, cordial and almost apologetic" as he pressed harder. As proof, Colson pointed to the fact that "the only ornament on Goodman's desk was the Nixon Inaugural Medal."¹⁰² Goodman later concluded that this proved that "[e]vidently Colson has no sense of humor" and "he must think no one else has one, either" because he had cleared his otherwise famously cluttered desk and left only the medal as a pointed joke and referred to it facetiously at the time.¹⁰³

Still, Goodman fully realized Colson's hostile intentions. In a later speech he quoted Colson's words to CBS President Frank Stanton that "'We (meaning of course the White House) will bring you to your knees in the marketplace'" and called them "one of the most chilling, blatant and authenticated threats in my knowledge."¹⁰⁴ Goodman's willingness to maintain his independence from White House pressure and to speak out publicly and repeatedly against such intimidation resulted in his inclusion on the infamous Nixon Administration "Enemies List"—the only network television executive so listed.¹⁰⁵ His stalwartness also won him numerous awards including the George Foster Peabody Award for "outstanding work in the area of First Amendment rights and privileges for broadcasting" in 1974 and the National Association of Broadcasters' Distinguished Service Award in 1976, perhaps the most prestigious individual honor in broadcasting.¹⁰⁶

Goodman remained a life-long defender of the First Amendment and freedom of the press and was chagrined that such a central tenet of democracy was continuously under attack. Speaking to the Kentucky Broadcasters' Association in 1979 after he had retired from NBC, he opined that the First Amendment was for him "an absolute" and "even to be debating its merits 200 years after the founding of our country is depressing."¹⁰⁷ In a set of talks the following year that was part of the "Open Channels" public lecture series at the Museum of Broadcasting, Goodman was equally adamant, utterly rejecting the view expressed by some that journalists' "overwrought reaction to every small limit on their expansive privileges hurt their credibility." "I think," he insisted, "every small limit is too much; and that the rights guaranteed to journalists under the Constitution are much less a danger to our freedoms and safety than the encircling and stifling actions which would limit those rights."¹⁰⁸ One can only imagine how he would feel about the state of White House press relations during the era of the presidency of Donald Trump and how adamantly he would fight against repeated efforts to demean the television press and its attempts to report the news accurately.

The Coming of Fred Silverman and the Decline of "TV as a Public Good" Mentality

Goodman was widely respected for his public defense of journalistic freedom, but he was primarily measured in the ruthlessly competitive television industry by his ability to maximize revenue for NBC and its parent company RCA and to outpace his competition. Although NBC did well financially and in terms of audience share in the early years of Goodman's tenure as president, he was never able to break CBS's overall ratings stranglehold and the network maintained its reputation with being content with second best, behind CBS and ahead of at-the-time lowly ABC. Programming executive John Mc-Mahon, for instance, recalled his first impression of walking into NBC's headquarters in 1972 after a decade at third-place ABC: "it was like walking into the Bank of America. It seemed so solemn. Nobody was pressing to be number one."¹⁰⁹ In an era when the three networks collectively formed an oligopoly that as late as 1975 shared a $2.5 billion advertising market, averaged a 93.6 percent share of the prime-time viewing audience, and each earned more than $100 million a year, there was relatively little pressure on the networks to dramatically alter their approach.¹¹⁰ But this began to change rapidly in the late 1970s due to growing competition from cable television, new federal restrictions on network programming and syndication rights, and reduced revenues as a result of Congress banning televised cigarette advertisements.¹¹¹ The changes "engulfing television" in the late 1970s, wrote Reuven Frank, were "testing its [NBC's] ability to stay alive" because it was the network that was "structurally weakest . . . most dependent on a corporate parent [RCA], and the least fortified with reserves of money or ideas."¹¹² In this context of greater financial pressures, Goodman was replaced as president in 1974, and then as Chief Executive Officer in 1977 in the face of what one reporter called "a year of unremitting drops in audience ratings" and the shocking fact that ABC leapt over NBC from third to first among the major networks.¹¹³ Ever the wry statesman, Goodman tried to lighten the grim mood at the 1977 office party for his successor as CEO, Herb Schlosser. Offering a toast to Schlosser, he played directly off of a highly controversial pronouncement two weeks prior by television journalist/personality Barbara Walters who had recently left the Today show and NBC for an unprecedented one-million-dollar contract with ABC and who started her new position with a one-on-one interview with incoming President Jimmy Carter. Using Walters exact closing phrasing to the President-elect Goodman toasted Schlosser: "Herb, be wise with us . . . be good to us. . . ."¹¹⁴ Despite the attempted light-hearted levity, Goodman's departure as first president and then chairman of the board marked a dramatic shift at NBC away from his vision of television as a public good that could and should inform, educate, and challenge rather than simply entertain.

Desperate for higher ratings, Edgar Griffiths, the chairman of NBC's parent company RCA, enticed ABC wunderkind Fred Silverman to come to NBC in 1978 for a million dollar salary and full control of the network.¹¹⁵ Goodman, although then still chairman of the board of NBC, was apparently only notified of this decision after the fact.¹¹⁶ Unlike Goodman, who spent his entire thirty-year television career at NBC and was the consummate "company man," Silverman had the unique distinction of having hopped between all three major networks and was widely seen as only loyal to the never-ending quest for higher ratings.¹¹⁷ Silverman's choice for new chairman of the board, Jane Cahill Pfeiffer, was the first woman ever to hold such a position, but she came from IBM and knew little about the television industry and soon earned the sobriquet of "Attila the Nun."¹¹⁸ The results were largely unsuccessful, personally ugly, and relatively short-lived as both executives lacked the easy-going humor and decorum that Goodman had exemplified. In his account of the unraveling of the Silverman-Pfeiffer era, television critic Tom Shales called Goodman "one of the last true gentlemen of broadcasting." According to Shales' article, after Pfeiffer's brief and often tense two-year stint at NBC, Silverman and Griffiths colluded to leak to the press a humiliating story about her imminent resignation. After she refused to leave, Silverman fired her. Less than a year later, after poor ratings and much infighting, Silverman resigned from NBC. For her part, shortly after she was first hired in 1978, Pfeiffer gracelessly sent a terse letter of resignation for Goodman to sign demanding a "speedy conclusion" and "an early resolution of your situation" while he was still in the hospital recovering from surgery.¹¹⁹ It was evidently this act that ultimately led Goodman to choose to retire from NBC rather than stay on in a largely ceremonial but lucrative role as Chairman of the Executive Committee. After Goodman retired, he served on a number of other boards of directors over the next decade or so. Though he regularly told numerous reporters and audiences that he planned to write "the inevitable book" on television, he never did so.¹²⁰

A Kentucky Legacy

Despite the heights to which he ascended and the rarified lifestyle it afforded him, Goodman always remained committed to the ideal of television as a democratic institution that could and should promote "the public good," and he advanced this vision throughout his career. Unlike today's network executives who rarely take public political positions and who most viewers would be hard-pressed to identify unless they are involved in scandal, Goodman appeared regularly on television newscasts, before Congress and various live audiences, and in the press. Indeed, for a time in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was one of the key public faces and voices of the television industry and the press in general, speaking forcefully and repeatedly against government intrusions on First Amendment freedoms and advancing the idea that "the media do not have privileges, the public has rights."¹²¹ A significant part of what made him such a credible spokesperson in these years was the way he embraced and employed his Kentucky identity. As someone from "middle America" with a soft southern twang, a clear sense of the value of humor, and a strong familiarity with rural and small town life, Goodman sought to present television and especially television news as not just the product of northeastern urban elites but as something meant to serve all Americans. He also well recognized the critical personal and professional importance of nurturing his home state connections and the feelings were mutual for many in Kentucky. In a letter of appreciation upon his retirement, Fred Paxton, a Paducah television station president, summed up Goodman's legacy and importance for the state and the nation:

You have stood for all those things which a broadcaster should be, when many didn't even realize what they were. You have brought a breadth and scope to an industry all too-inflicted with tunnel vision. And you have lent it dignity when others were driving it toward schlock-o-mania. Just shows what a fellow can do when he comes from good stock. All of Kentucky should be proud of you.¹²²

Goodman's reply to Paxton a few days later perfectly encapsulate his vision of the institution he had helped grow almost from its infancy and reveal why he was able to advance this view so effectively over his career: "It is a splendid—industry?—business?—service?—I have never found a comfortable word for it, but it is exciting to be a part of it."¹²³

Today's media landscape is dramatically different than that of the era when Goodman helped run NBC. Hundreds of traditional newspapers have gone out of business and those that remain, except for a select few, are fighting for their survival. Broadcast media has fractalized into dozens of television networks, most catering to ever narrower audiences, and many viewers now watch programming on cell phones, iPads, and the internet rather than on television sets. With the advent of hyper-conservative Fox News in 1996, much of television news has become ever more explicitly partisan. Yet despite or perhaps because of these changes, the basic tenets that Julian Goodman devoted so much of his career to remain more essential than ever. In a time when the current president and some in his administration denounce the legitimacy and necessity of many traditional news sources including NBC, routinely labeling them "fake news" and "the enemies of the people," and the president devotes countless hours to challenging the very idea of a free press, it is important to remember how network presidents in the past such as Julian Goodman were willing to stand up for such freedoms. His story reminds us, too, that the supposed chasm between urban and rural America, "the coasts" and "flyover country," is neither inevitable nor insurmountable and that the idea of public service and television as a "public good" is one worth fighting for.