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As important, Lyndon was thoughtfuland attentive toward Russell, who was a lonely bachelor.Johnson tookpains.to make his family Dick Russell s family, often having lunch withhim at the Senate on Saturdays and inviting him home for weekend meals.The result was that in 1950, after a 12-seat Democratic majority hadshrunk to two, Johnson s cultivation of other senators, but especially Russell, had catapulted him into running for party Whip.Circumstanceshad come together to make Johnson a leading candidate for the job.A con-servative-liberal split among Democratic senators made a moderate with afoot in each camp a way to hold the party together.Johnson had establishedhimself as a party centrist.An anti civil rights stand and militant anticommunism gave him credibility with conservatives, while support of domestic social programs redeemed him with liberals.And Johnson was eagerto take the job.Though liberal senators made some bows in the directionof Alabama s John Sparkman, on January 2, 1951, by acclamation, Johnsonbecame the youngest Whip in party history.Although the Whip s job carried no real power, it lifted him out of the rut of freshman senator, andallowed Johnson to be noticed. Most important, it enlarged his reputation in Texas, where newspapers carried stories about his remarkablerecognition after only two years in the Senate as one of the most powerful men in the Capital. State pride in his accomplishment made hisreelection likely, while pro oil, anti civil rights, and hard line anticommunism over the next three years made it all but certain. The Senator :: 75:: building a family fortuneAt the same time he established a secure hold on his Senate seat, Johnsondevoted himself to his family s financial future.By 1951 52, the Johnsonswere already well off.The radio station, KTBC, which in 1947 Lady Birdhad signed over to a company she called the Texas Broadcasting Corporation, had increased in value to $488,000.Moreover, in the spring of 1952,the Johnsons looked forward to the possibility of significant financial gainsfrom the acquisition of an FCC license to construct the only Very HighFrequency (VHF) television station in Austin.Between 1945 and 1948 theFCC had allocated only 106 television stations for the entire country.In1948, as pressure built for new allocations, the FCC had declared a moratorium on issuing new licenses and launched a four-year study of whereand how many new stations should be constructed across the United States.As early as the spring of 1948, Lyndon and Lady Bird had consideredentering the television business both as a broadcaster and a distributor inthe Austin area for the Dumont network and TV manufacturer.But theywere hesitant.The cost of setting up a station was considerable and thelong-term prospects for the industry were uncertain.The existing stationsin Texas were losing money, and Lyndon believed it might take ten yearsbefore a new station could turn a profit.By July 1952, however, when theFCC lifted its freeze and began allocating 1,945 new television stations, itwas reasonably certain that acquisition of a VHF station promised a largereturn.Given how lucrative a VHF station seemed likely to be, it is surprisingthat Lady Bird s Texas Broadcasting Company had no competition for theone VHF channel allocated to Austin.As one of the applicants for a lessdesirable Ultra High Frequency (UHF) station in Austin in 1952 explainedit: Lyndon was in a favorable position to get that station even if somebodycontested it.Politics is politics. Yet Johnson and many of his associatesemphatically denied that politics played a part and not surprisingly fewtraces of Johnson s actions at the FCC showed up in the Commission s files.Yet Johnson knew that he could count on a friendly reception for LadyBird s requests from certain commissioners, but his efforts to influence theCommission did not stop there.In September 1945, for example, when themovie star Gene Autry asked him to put in a plug for a radio license inTucson, Arizona, Lyndon replied: There is not much I can do on the matter you mentioned but you can count on me putting in a good word foryou. He was not so coy with Tommy Corcoran, who in November 1945asked him on the telephone to help block an application for a New York 76 :: lyndon b.johnsonradio station.Johnson said he understood.In February 1946, when Lyndonwanted to know if NBC was planning to go into Austin, Corcoran, who hadclose contact with Charles Denny, who was about to become FCC chairman, assured Lyndon that he knew how to do that and promised to findthat out for you. Lyndon, of course, had his own contacts at the FCC, oneof whom in 1946 let him read the application from the Texas Regulars fora competing radio station in Austin.He also had a well-developed knowledge of how to make things happen at the FCC.Johnson s influence at the Commission extended to assuring thatKTBC-TV would enjoy a monopoly on television broadcasting inAustin throughout the fifties.Where the Dallas Fort Worth area receivedfive VHF stations, Houston four, and San Antonio four, Austin got onlyone.The FCC contended that technical considerations about signal interference and population were the determining factors in these allocations
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