[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 47 (Wednesday, March 21, 2012)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E408-E409]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         ON THE RETIREMENT OF C SPAN FOUNDER AND CEO BRIAN LAMB

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, March 21, 2012

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and honor Brian 
Lamb, the founder and CEO of C SPAN, who recently announced his 
decision to retire.
  Mr. Lamb founded the non-profit educational network 34 years ago and 
since then has worked tirelessly to bring live coverage of government 
and politics to the American people. Before Mr. Lamb created C SPAN, 
most Americans had to rely exclusively on news reports about what their 
representatives said and did in Washington. Because of his vision, 
millions of Americans everyday can see and hear government in action 
for themselves. I have had the privilege of working with Mr. Lamb over 
the years and I am a proud supporter of his efforts to make government 
transparent and accessible.
  I commend Mr. Lamb for his vision, humility and his commitment to 
educating Americans about history and the government. I wish him all 
the best in his future career endeavors. I commend the following 
article to my colleagues.

             C SPAN Founder Lamb Steps Down After 34 Years

                            (By Paul Farhi)

       Want to know just how purposefully un-glamorous and 
     resolutely non-partisan is C SPAN, the pioneering public-
     affairs TV network founded by Brian Lamb in 1978?
       Consider this: In countless appearances spanning thousands 
     of hours of interviews and call-in programs, Lamb has never 
     once uttered his own name on the air. Too showy. Too much 
     like regular TV, which is what Lamb, a stolid Hoosier, has 
     always sought to avoid.
       ``No one does that here,'' he protested on Monday. ``We 
     just don't do it. It's always been part of our mission not to 
     make us the center of attention . . .. We're the antithesis 
     of everything you see on commercial television.''
       So Lamb, typically, also wasn't making a big deal about the 
     news C SPAN buried in the second paragraph of a news 
     announcement it issued in the dead of Sunday evening: that 
     after 34 years as C SPAN chief executive, he's stepping down 
     from running the Washington-based operation he conceived and 
     built.
       Lamb, 70, isn't fading away entirely. He'll continue as 
     executive chairman of the nonprofit organization and as host 
     of ``Q & A,'' his Sunday interview program. He also plans to 
     continue teaching, primarily at Purdue University, his alma 
     mater.
       But he's handing over day to day operations to two 
     successors in waiting: current co presidents Rob Kennedy, 55, 
     and Susan Swain, 57, both longtime C SPAN hands.
       ``This has been something I've wanted to do for a while,'' 
     Lamb said. ``I wanted an orderly transition when everyone was 
     ambulatory and standing up, with some thought behind it.''
       Lamb was a young naval officer in the 1960s who used to 
     slip over to the Capitol from the Washington Navy Yard to 
     watch floor debates in the House and Senate. He later served 
     as a telecommunications staffer in the Johnson and Nixon 
     administrations and as a press secretary for Colorado Sen. 
     Peter Dominick (R).
       As the Washington bureau chief of the cable TV trade 
     magazine Cablevision in the 1970s, Lamb cooked up the idea 
     for a network that would cover, with utter dispassion, the 
     congressional debates that he'd witnessed during his Navy 
     days. Lamb rustled up the money from some public relations 
     conscious cable barons and set about convincing the House to 
     let TV cameras onto the floor.
       C SPAN, which stands for Cable Satellite Public Affairs 
     Network, was among the first nationally distributed cable 
     channels, following after the debut of HBO, Showtime, Pat 
     Robertson's CBN Network, and WTBS, Ted Turner's ``super 
     station.'' It is now composed of three networks, plus a 
     Washington radio station (WCSP, 90.1 FM), and a massive and 
     historically rich video archive of congressional sessions, 
     hearings, speeches, campaign rallies, think tank conferences, 
     author interviews and what haveyous from C SPAN over the 
     years.
       Lamb holds the distinction of being the only one of those 
     early network founders not to become a billionaire from his 
     creation. On the other hand, he says, ``I never wanted to be 
     rich. I wasn't the slightest bit interested in that.''
       He had to settle instead for helping to revolutionize the 
     political culture of Washington. What MTV did for popular 
     music--that is, helped make it theatrical and visual--C SPAN 
     did for Congress and the wonks who follow it.
       C SPAN's gavel to gavel coverage of the House changed the 
     spontaneous, freewheeling debates on the floor into more 
     scripted and polished speeches played for the TV cameras, 
     said Charles Johnson, a former House parliamentarian. Members 
     became conscious that their words weren't just going into the 
     Congressional Record; they now had an audience at home, 
     leading to charts and props and camera friendly displays that 
     hadn't existed before.
       It also led to an increase in grandstanding. In 1984, the 
     fiery, after hours speeches of a young Republican backbencher 
     named Newt Gingrich (R Ga.) so angered House Speaker Tip 
     O'Neill (D Mass.) that he ordered the House cameras (then as 
     now under House control) to pan the empty chamber in an 
     effort to embarrass Gingrich.
       Nevertheless, after disdaining to follow the House for more 
     than six years, the Senate finally relented and let C SPAN 
     carry its proceedings live in 1986.
       Having the cameras on hand ``changed the quality of the 
     oratory,'' said Johnson, avoiding direct judgment on whether 
     it did so in a good or bad way.
       Lamb says he doesn't care either way: ``If there's a public 
     meeting, there ought to be cameras there,'' he says. ``Those 
     meetings are paid for by we, the taxpayers. People should be 
     able to see what [the elected officials] look like, what the 
     buildings look like, what language they're using.''
       Through all those decades, Lamb has been the continuous 
     thread: unflashy, unemotional, ``a video Buddha, television's 
     most stationary being,'' in the words of one magazine writer. 
     In 23 years of hosting ``Booknotes,'' his author interview 
     show, for example, he notes that he never missed a single 
     Sunday night, for 52 weeks every year. In total, he's logged 
     more hours on national TV than perhaps any person in America.
       He's not bragging about that, of course. Or much else.

[[Page E409]]

       ``I never thought the person on top here mattered all that 
     much, except to keep the rhythm of the place going,'' he 
     said. ``We've established a good transition. I don't think my 
     departure will be more than a blip on the radar screen.''

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