LBJ
He worked in various positions in the Johnson administration and continued to work for the former President after he retired to Texas. As "Thinking Big" by Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolf noted in 1977, “when Lyndon Johnson returned to Texas in 1969, he brought Tom Johnson along to serve as executive assistant in charge of LBJ’s Texas Broadcasting Company.”
The same book also revealed that in 1970 the then-30-year-old Tom Johnson was elected executive vice-president of LBJ’s Texas Broadcasting Company and “he joined the board of directors of the City National Bank of Austin, headed up LBJ’s Austin station KTBC, and participated in the town’s business-dominated civic groups."
The Austin TV station which Tom Johnson headed in the 1970s was profitable because LBJ “had friends in high places among those who controlled the broadcast industry,” according to a 1978 book by another former LBJ aide, Bobby Baker, titled "Wheeling And Dealing: Confessions of a Capitol Hill Operator". The same book also revealed that “it is no accident that Austin, TX, was for years the only city of its size with only one television station” and “LBJ demanded, and received, the opportunity to pick and choose programs for his monopoly station from among those offered by all three of the major networks.” "Wheeling And Dealing" also points out that “no other television station in America had such a unique and cozy arrangement” as the LBJ-owned KTBC station which Tom Johnson used to head for LBJ.
Read more about this topic: Tom Johnson (journalist), Biography