How Did I Get Here?

Brooke Johnson

President, Food Network and Cooking Channel
  • Education
  • Louisville Catholic Girls High School, Woodland Hills, Calif., class of 1969
  • Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., class of 1973
  • Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, class of 1974
  • Work Experience
  • 1976–78
    On-air reporter, KGUN-TV Tucson
  • 1980–83
    Associate producer, executive producer for local programming, WLS-TV Chicago
  • 1983–90
    Program director, WABC-TV New York
  • 1990–2000
    Executive vice president, general manager, A&E
  • 2000–03
    Stay-at-home mom
  • 2003–04
    Senior vice president, general manager, Food Network
  • 2004–10
    President, Food Network
  • 2010–Present
    President, Food Network, Cooking Channel, and Food Category for Scripps Networks
  • Life Lessons
  • “Being direct, honest, candid, and apolitical is the most efficient way to run an organization.”
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  • “If you’re not so happy in your job right now, don’t obsess over it. You never know when your great job will come.”
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  • “I was a mediocre student. I didn’t enjoy studying, and I didn’t really resonate with the nuns.”
  • With President George Bush and Barbara Bush celebrating A&E’s Biography series in the mid-’90s
  • “We did Biography, which was the hot thing of its era—it put A&E on the map. And I said, ‘We’ve got a lot of history programming. Why don’t we do a history network?’ The History Channel began in 1995 and blew up.”
  • “We had a huge success co-producing Pride and Prejudice with the BBC. It launched Colin Firth’s career.”
  • “The teen years are a really important time for kids. They take more of your mental bandwidth.”
  • In August, Johnson announced she would soon retire
  • “I had this rather foolish plan that I would start off as an on-air reporter and then move into programming. I wasn’t very good on-air.”
  • “After I left, they hired Oprah. So my timing was not impeccable on that one.”
  • “My No. 1 job was to create a successful morning show. Regis [Philbin] was our first choice. We had to put a misery clause in his contract: If he was absolutely miserable, we would release him. It’s the only misery clause I’ve ever heard of.”
  • Staff with Regis, 1985
  • “They had this show Iron Chef, which was in Japanese with English dubbing. I said, ‘Wouldn’t this show be better if it were produced in English?’”
  • With Bobby Flay at Food Network’s 20th birthday party, 2013