After 33 years, C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb is retiring. It's still the best value on TV:
The three C-Span channels subsist on about 6 cents a month per subscriber, giving it a total budget of about $60 million a year. With the funds, C-Span sends camera crews to events and produces programs like “Washington Journal,” “Book TV” and “American History TV.”
Although the C-Span network is not rated by Nielsen because it does not have commercials, “it gets a lot of viewership,” Mr. Smit said, citing data from set-top boxes and focus groups. “People love their C-Span.”
Though the network has undoubtedly had public relations benefits for the cable and satellite industries over the years, it was initially conceived as a public service. The idea was Mr. Lamb’s, who was a reporter covering the communications industry in Washington when he started proposing the concept to the operators of then-new cable systems across the country. He received support from industry executives like Robert Rosencrans, who gave Mr. Lamb a $25,000 check to get started.
“They did not have to do this,” Mr. Lamb said of those in the cable industry. “It was one of those moments where the collective good of all those individuals paid off.”
To Mr. Lamb’s dismay, the House would not let C-Span install its own cameras in the chamber in 1979; it allowed access only to a television feed controlled by the Congress itself. That is why, in a debate for instance, the camera is trained on the speaker, not the person being spoken about. “We’ve asked them many times to loosen it up,” to no avail, Mr. Lamb said.
C-Span has also tried and failed many times to lobby for television coverage of Supreme Court arguments. Instead, it plays the audio tapes of oral arguments when they are released.
The network increasingly faces competition from the federal government, which is streaming its own proceedings and hearings on the Internet — “the last thing I expected to have happen,” Mr. Lamb said.
Waldo's a PM's Questions geek.
No comments:
Post a Comment