C-SPAN has kept eye on Congress 40 years
Forty years ago, C-SPAN went live with its first public broadcast from the House of Representatives chamber, giving Americans a television-shaped window into how lawmakers behave in the ornate room where history is often made.
Ushering in the C-SPAN era March 19, 1979, was Al Gore, then a representative from Tennessee, who had pushed for the network’s access to the Capitol.
“From this day forward,” Gore said at the time, “every member of this body must ask himself or herself, how many Americans are listening to the debates which are made?”
Since that day, when CSPAN debuted with four employees, the network has become a mainstay in U.S. politics. We spoke with Susan Swain, one of C-SPAN’s two chief executives, about the birth of the network, Washington’s initial resistance to being caught on camera and how the network has adapted to the social media age.
Q: In the moment that Al Gore approached the lectern in the House chamber and C-SPAN went live, what changed in American politics?
A: The fact that people could actually see their elected representatives in their living room — and now on their phones — was a fundamental change. In the past, people might pull the lever every two years for their member of Congress and, if they were super engaged, might read a newsletter that came in the mail or go to an occasional town hall meeting.
This meant that any time you were interested, you could watch what your member of Congress had to say.
Q: Initially, there was a lot of resistance in Washington to the idea of C-SPAN broadcasting House floor debates. And the Senate didn’t allow C-SPAN in for another seven years. Why was there such resistance?
A: Members had concerns that the cameras would be swinging around and taking pictures of members while they were not focused attentively on the debates or — heaven forbid — closing their eyes for a second.
One of the ways this finally came to bear was that they created a compromise that members could live with. The compromise was that the House , the speaker’s office, would control the cameras that were on the floor of the House.
Every time there’s a change of speaker, we have sent a letter saying: ‘Now’s the time. Allow C-SPAN or other journalistic organizations to put our own cameras in side by side.’ That argument continues to go nowhere.
Q: Were politicians selfconscious about how they’d appear on camera?
A: I think more so there was the concern that they wouldn’t be in control of the picture. The Senate finally acquiesced, and it’s a classic story of American politics.
The House was coming into people’s living rooms via C-SPAN and then regularly on the nightly news because what we did could be picked up regularly for nightly stories about the House. Television loves pictures, so they would do more stories about the House. The Senate was becoming concerned that it was becoming the secondtier citizen of Congress.
The person who was really most instrumental is Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who had been one of the old-line members who was very much an institutionalist and very much concerned about how the Senate would change. He went home to West Virginia to speak and was introduced in West Virginia, his home state, as the speaker of the House. And it’s because he had a big shock of white hair, as did the then-Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill. And this brought it all home to him. So he convinced some of the recalcitrant members, they did a vote, and C-SPAN went on in June of 1986.
Q: What is one of your most significant memories from your time at C-SPAN?
A: The day that the Challenger shuttle exploded we were televising it live.