Nixon, Newhouse & Klein on Antitrust Law and Media Ownership

You'll continue to grow.
Yes, we have.
I know it's a very sensitive list of papers.
I know all of the meetings.
We're going to put the Mississippi papers in there.
We have 22 papers now.
We have the Presbyterian papers.
When I, when we bought Mobile, we didn't know that they owned Plastic Gear, but we bought his paper, and this is the except for Jackson.
But also, we invented the original song of the L.A. Country Band for Orleans, which, of course, was a powerful favorite, and this would be all of them.
That's where it is.
Oh, and Jay-Z, we all, Glenn, and Tech Sticks were very important to us.
Do you like some coffee or tea?
We, uh,
Uh, what was, what was happening in Newark that was going on?
I didn't really know that I could make it.
I thought that it was a prosperous picture.
It once was.
When I bought the Newark-style ledger, it was highly prosperous.
Yeah.
And, uh, right between, before they got to it, the Indians got to it, and they were buying.
The Indians got to it?
Yes.
Only the Indians could run the business.
There was a time when you were at Booth's.
And you're a plane dealer.
That's doing well.
That's a good thing.
So much so that when we bought that plane, we were the second paper.
And for years, Tom Bale was working.
And all they were interested in was how much
We haven't paid a dividend on the car for about seven years.
And we said to Tom, you go in there and operate the way you should.
If you want to pay the penny, you can probably put in eight to ten million dollars in the advance payment.
And of course, he's passed the press.
We have 40,000 more circulations in the press.
And that was very, very bad.
The rest of us, that's how bad it is.
Well, how about by the Prime Minister?
Do you mean it is not making money?
Oh, yes.
The Prime Minister is making money now.
Well, it wasn't before.
Whatever they did make, they took out.
But you're flying back in.
We're flying back in.
That's what you've done before.
What about?
Why don't you give us something in California?
Okay.
Any of you.
There's no paper.
Any parts.
Tell the paper that I listened to today.
The Chronicle.
The Chronicle is not well.
And the Chronicle
I just had no reflection on them.
I had a lot of good friends down there, but one of those family-owned papers, you know, you know, just deteriorated.
But deteriorated.
That's right.
The Examiner has a better, I think, runs a better paper than the Chronicle out there.
There's a little more conservative, a little more conservative, you know, funny things, and then another examiner's doing a little more towards it.
Is that right?
Well, the Chronicle's, what the Chronicle said about the Chronicle,
Now I tried to buy it for years when Dennis McElroy was married to one of the young daughters.
And he tried to get it for me.
I met with him and they were making so much money on television.
And it was great.
San Jose is very old, that's rare.
But you know, up on that valley, that bee, they just climb up on it.
They really do.
In Sacramento, they're dropping back a little bit now.
In Sacramento, you can just pick that up and just, you know, a small part out on top of it, they're quite, they're doing well.
A long road to go.
But he's an excellent doctor, and if anybody can do it, he can do it.
I think if you'd like to say anything about the only really major company to do a sole ownership, right?
I haven't thought of him.
I thought we were the only ones.
You're a sole owner.
I own all the stock.
You do?
All the stock.
It's so complicated.
It's not that well.
A lot of people are doing better.
My wife gave me something, and I decided not to show it to you.
But the types of the right life.
Four months ago.
That's a cartoon.
No.
Four months ago, my wife presented you with five.
Well, I didn't even tell you.
You have both, too?
Well, I have all kinds.
I'll tell you the way I want to read that.
And I didn't know that you had that.
I should have put you on the magazine.
Both, too.
I don't know.
How's God?
Well, that's good.
I like it.
It's the best election.
No more.
This is from four months ago.
Now, my wife gave me this morning with a letter.
She said, I want you to give it to Mr.
This is now.
This is now.
This is now.
She says, make sure you send me a letter right now.
Very nice.
I'll take this over to the next.
She's up in New York?
No, Chicago today.
Columbus, then.
With all of my acquisitions, I go back 40 years.
Before we did, before we made them, our lawyer went to see the Justice Department and gave them all the facts.
When we got through, they said, well, we'll investigate and we'll let you know.
We investigated and we got word back that unless we get a serious complaint, you can ride ahead.
There never has been a complaint.
There isn't one now.
As we just said, I am one of the few
I don't know any other group newspaper owners that have done it on a stock exchange.
I don't know all the stock, whereas on the group papers on the stock exchange, I have a lot of stockholders, and what has always displayed me is someday, some eager beaver, purebred, will decide that he doesn't approve of group ownership, open ownership.
He would say, well, I own two percent of the newspapers in Atlanta.
I should be broken up.
I'm afraid that at that time— Do you mean what— They would say that—if I get it right—they would say that it's all right with the Los Angeles Times because it's on the big board and we want you to not be used.
Well, I'll be easy to tell— First.
Oh, first, yes.
But you're not on the exchanges.
No, I'm not.
I am not on exchange.
I don't have any stockholders.
The easier to tackle me, you get less flack.
I wanted to hope that I could go to somebody to say, well, if this, if you look this over, it has no merit.
Well, I'd like to, instead of being the guinea pig in something they're trying to do, I would like to have a friend who might present
Would this involve, when you speak of the Negro Beaver, do you mean somebody, is Earl in the back?
No sir, I don't believe you, there's no change in that, yes.
Dean, John Dean.
I've been the lawyer.
The hair is a little long, but he's still smiling.
Anyway, it shows that we have both sides.
Well, that's the kids these days.
I always say, I'm going to say that the situation is, of course, that you're here where we were more likely
field of the television newspaper thing, I think, where you've got these public interest groups, you know, who are really out to, well, I had just a terrible event.
I had a group of herds there that said, these were basically television owners.
Some of them were still joining, some of them were joining some of their newspaper and television, not the networks, they were not there.
And we talked about that, and we talked particularly about the fact
where, that's probably not a proper analogy, where a bunch of clowns get in and say, we're interested in the public and sort of control this all while.
They did this to W.K.
Adams from the Daily Newstages.
I don't know whether they
Well, the point that I make is that what it really gets down to is not media.
What it really gets down to is an attack on what I would call a business strategy.
And I business clients here.
Don't you think so?
Isn't that what it is?
And in this instance, all that I can say
My approach to it is very colored with the fact that I'm accused of this and I plead guilty.
I lean toward the businessman or the future businessman who can run a property correctly, runs it well, and makes a profit.
And when I see groups of people trying to step in
in the models of the facility because it is successful.
It doesn't deal with me at all.
As a matter of fact, I'll carry it further.
This whole deal with the man I trust, if the United States then flies in there, that's supposed to happen.
It's on.
The whole deal with the man I trust, we are very seriously jeopardizing America's competitive position in the world by the enforcement of our man I trust laws.
We can't do it without them.
Europe is all together against all of us.
You deal with the Russians, and it's the whole country, and here you have our guys all doing this.
Well, anyway, John Connolly, who was Secretary of the Treasury, became very interested in this subject, and we started studying it in the administration, very quietly, actually very quietly, because he wanted to get some pressure.
He wanted to, you know,
I can assure you that my own views, I start with any one of these cases when they come to my attention, are first to say, well, now let's look at the person who owns it.
What kind of a job are they?
Are they running a condition of property?
And if they are, then they go forward.
Because basically, it's running the paper successfully.
Mr. Dean, Mr. Newhouse.
Hello.
John, I was discussing with Mr. .
The general velocity we have with regard to newspapers, television, et cetera, et cetera.
His change, you probably, or maybe, or may not be aware,
to choose the sole owner.
He doesn't have to talk to a lawyer or a chef.
He has a number of his papers in about 10 states.
He's got to go to all the other states.
And this question arises, I suppose, that some demagogue or either leader, as you might call him, starts to try to promote either of the Congress,
or through the Justice Department or through the FCC or something like that.
They started a crusade for the purpose of breaking it up on the ground that it isn't a healthy thing for that kind of ownership to exist.
I was pointing out to him that we approach that quite differently from some in this town.
That we begin by looking at the business aspects that if a publisher
says the name of ecology, or the name of people's rights, or the name of this or that, they'll say we've got a reputation.
So they want to grab this from that other guy and break it up.
Where there are real reasons they want to go, that's really what it's about.
They'll use the other that's on these tolerating things.
What I haven't been able to see.
Oh, the counter-advertisement.
I mean,
on a program that's not doing enough here, there, and the other thing.
And they'll argue about this and that.
And if they get in, they'll just say, because after all, it's a business proposition.
Right, sure.
But isn't that really what you're concerned about?
On television, if anybody's going to be tempted, we have no objection.
What we will do, and I told Larry a few minutes ago, Buffalo has come to us and said, would you exchange your station for us?
So we will accomplish the same thing, except we won't be doing it as good a job.
However, I'm not interested in television.
If they leave me alone with news segments or magazines, at some point, Arthur Goldberg started suing against me in New York, saying he wants to speak.
And so I started suing.
Mr. Lifkin, who at that time was his partner,
file a suit and they don't count it.
Well, they try to get me to leave with them along in Denver, which we had planned.
And then they top the suit.
Something to be with them, they may think that that is something that they can do.
If it has merit, then I have no objection.
But I'd like somebody to look at the facts, see what has merit.
The man who is now head of the Antitrust Division of Justice.
doesn't have the inherent belief that bigness is bad.
And he looks at it and analyzes it and looks at it in terms of statutes that are like that.
What we, let me suggest this, that the, certainly, he can be, he knows my views and he can be aware.
Here in the White House, of course, you're quite aware of this.
And you see one of these situations arise
a young man, probably around the waist of five.
And you can be sure that we'll look into it.
But I must say,
But I must say, well I'd have to admit, that what you really have here is, under any administration we're talking, we elect a president and we appoint a few people.
Underneath there's a bureaucracy.
The bureaucracy are a bunch of crusaders, and those people are always trying to make the nation themselves and so on.
It's very hard.
We help her do our best to keep her under control, to make sure that they do a fair thing.
You see, a lot of the people that come in, they basically are people that start with an anti-business bet.
Right?
Correct.
Right.
They really, frankly, they really hate the establishment.
They've been taught that in school.
Unfortunately, the teachers may turn around and go, well, I don't think we're going to let the establishment
I think that this place is just the opposite.
We have, as we've demonstrated on several occasions, we've, in this field, we've attempted to be fair.
We are not against something that's big because it's big.
It isn't a question of whether it's a big business or a small business.
Whether it's good or it's not.
We've always said that's what we believe.
What impresses me about your operations is that in every place you've gone,
We've taken the papers and we've built them up, we've built the circulation, we've run a good job and that's what really matters.
Thank you, if I can come back on it.
Yes, sir.
We are not going to be, we're not going to be out of it.
We have to be sure of this administration and that it gets to the well operating of these papers.
That is not what you're,
Not to do with editorial policy, we can also have peer evidence, but to me, in this country, if you ever get to the place where you start attacking successful business operators, you're going to really tear up, and particularly here, but it's for another reason.
The guild and the unions are so tough that I don't see how it's possible to run a decent figure.
That's how you do it.
They put the goods out, and they're wrong.
Oh, no.
I would be associated with that.
Oh, no.
What did you have to do?
I was going to talk with them.
That's why.
We had a five-year situation.
You know, it's very about on their own, they probably couldn't manage it, but they had a good time managing it.
It's like a franchise, you know, you take these, it's just a very different kind of thing, but you take these, the Herb Sanders franchise and so forth and so on.
People would operate those good, positive data on their own, but at the top, they don't want to be chicken.
so far I don't think they're going to have another argument, but they'll do well.
I just think that's it.
Mr. Lewis, a little before we discuss this, we were very much in New York, we were wasting a ton of time.
You went up this year and we certainly didn't do anything else for you.
And you weren't allowed a lot of the time you had to spend to do lessons.
No, no, I understand.
I chuckled with him a lot.
I have four newspapers in Alabama, and I have five newspapers in Alabama, too.
Five newspapers.
The biggest one was in Portland.
The other four were in Atlanta.
I actually, for our candidate, I'm a Spartan.
Well, I don't know how much you want to say.
And I thought, well, if I could come back with that, if you would say, I'd appreciate it very much.
Well, we did a child play with Bill Nichols in St. Louis.
Oh, my.
We danced the poles.
Well, that's about it for us.
Let me see.
I'd like to give you a... Not much.
It won't compromise.
A letter is easy.
Oh, we've got a beautiful name for you.
Bring me a couple of those.
Well, I wish, I'm sure you wish, I wish to run this up with you.
I'll run this up with you.
Get four weeks out of the way.
We've got to get to work.
Oh, I'm sorry.
These are, we probably have some of these.
This is the new presidential coupling.
That's the seal.
It's completely non-partisan.
That's the good thing.
All right.
Thank you.
Bye to me.
Thank you.

Nixon, Newhouse & Klein on Antitrust Law and Media Ownership

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Also recorded on October 9, 1972

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