Julian Goodman Dies at 90 Julian Goodman, a former journalist who produced the second Kennedy-Nixon debate before becoming the president of NBC during a tumultuous period of conflict with the Nixon administration, died on Monday at his home in Juno Beach, Fla. The cause was kidney failure, a family spokesman said. Though he took pride in his frequent defense of the First Amendment and in being targeted by the Nixon White House as a political opponent, Mr. Goodman had a reputation for being self-effacing and never asking for a promotion or a raise. "People gave me one when I did my work well," he wrote in 1985. When he was named president of NBC in 1965, he told The New York Times, "I am not an ambitious man." But four years later he was engaged in a war of words with Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, who accused the news media of biased coverage of the Vietnam War. Mr. Goodman responded, "Evidently he would prefer a different kind of television reporting - one that would be subservient to whatever group was in authority at the time." He later sparred with the Nixon speechwriter Patrick J. Buchanan, who said the networks should be decentralized, but Mr. Goodman called that "dangerous thinking." And he resisted the administration when it threatened to challenge broadcast licenses if network news divisions did not give President Richard M. Nixon what it considered unbiased - that is, more favorable - coverage. During his NBC tenure, Mr. Goodman also negotiated a record-setting $1 million deal to retain Johnny Carson as host of "The Tonight Show." He joined other network chiefs in pushing to end the Fairness Doctrine, which required networks to give equal time to opposing opinions. It was ultimately done away with. And he was compelled to apologize to viewers in 1968 after NBC cut away from a nationally broadcast New York Jets-Oakland Raiders game so that a movie version of "Heidi" could go on as scheduled. Television viewers never saw the end of the game, thereafter known as "the Heidi bowl," when Oakland scored two touchdowns in the last minute to overcome a 32-29 New York lead. Mr. Goodman called the programming switch "a forgivable error." "I missed the end of the game as much as anyone else," he said. Julian Byrn Goodman was born on May 1, 1922, in Glasgow, Ky., and began his journalism career as a $3-a-week reporter for The Glasgow Daily Times. After serving in the Army, he moved to Washington, where he met William McAndrew, the head of NBC News, who hired him for the night news desk, to replace David Brinkley. As an executive in the Washington bureau, Mr. Goodman later became a strong advocate for Mr. Brinkley, pressing NBC News to pair him with Chet Huntley to anchor the 1956 Democratic and Republican conventions. The two went on to fame anchoring the network's nightly news together for more than a decade. Mr. Goodman often joked that freeing Mr. Brinkley from the night desk had been his greatest contribution to journalism. Mr. Goodman produced the second Nixon-Kennedy debate in 1960 in Washington, in an NBC studio. He rejected Cleveland, the initial choice, saying he could not find a suitable location there. Cleveland reacted with umbrage, and Mr. Goodman rarely set foot in the city again. Through his associations with Mr. McAndrew and then with NBC's president, Robert Kintner, Mr. Goodman climbed the network ladder, reaching the president's office when Mr. Kintner was fired in 1965. Mr. Goodman, who celebrated his Kentucky roots, wrote that when he called his family with the news of his appointment, his father told him that he was proud of him but had to hang up to get to a mule sale. "A man can always use another mule," he told him. Mr. Goodman married Betty Davis, who was also from Kentucky, in 1946. She survives him, along with three sons, John, Jeffrey and Gregory; a daughter, Julie Koerner; and six grandchildren. Mr. Goodman expressed surprise that he was singled out by the Nixon administration. His name appeared on a White House "opponents" list, a broader one than the original list of 20 Nixon "enemies." He recalled being visited in 1970 by the Nixon aide Charles W. Colson, who he said had arrived intending to intimidate him. But Mr. Colson later described Mr. Goodman as accommodating, because the only ornament on Mr. Goodman's desk was a medal from Mr. Nixon's 1969 inauguration. What Mr. Colson did not know was that Mr. Goodman had cleaned up his notoriously cluttered desk, leaving only the medal as a gag. "Evidently Colson has no sense of humor," Mr. Goodman said afterward, "and he must think no one else has one, either." Correction: July 2, 2012 An earler version of this article incorrectly attributed a quote to former Nixon speechwriter Patrick J. Buchanan. He said the networks should be decentralized, but Julian Goodman, not Mr. Buchanan, called that "dangerous thinking."