Nicholas Johnson

Nicholas Johnson served on the Federal Communications Commission from 1966 to 1973, appointed by President Lyndon Johnson, and used that platform to dissent, repeatedly and publicly, from the FCC's pattern of accommodating commercial broadcasters at the expense of the public interest. His 1970 book How to Talk Back to Your Television Set made the case for citizen rights in broadcasting for a general audience, arguing that viewers had both the standing and the tools to challenge station license renewals and demand accountability from the airwaves they were told belonged to them. After leaving the FCC he chaired the National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting, continuing to push for structural media reform from outside the agency.

His connection to public access is direct. In 1972 Nicholas worked with Red Burns and George Stoney to help shape the FCC cable rules that became the legal foundation for mandatory public access channels, placing him among the policy architects of the PEG system itself. He later joined the faculty at the University of Iowa College of Law, where he taught communications and internet law until retiring in 2014.

The channels that community media centers operate exist in part because someone inside the regulatory system argued, persistently and on the record, that the public had a right to them. Nicholas was that person, and How to Talk Back to Your Television Set put the same argument into the hands of citizens who wanted to hold stations accountable.