Confessions of a C-SPAN Junkie
By Ruth Marcus
washingtonpost.com
Thursday, March 18, 2004; Page A31
A C-SPAN story, embarrassing but true: I climbed on the treadmill at the gym the other morning, clicked the channels of the attached TV down to the C-SPAN zone and was delighted -- honest! -- to find the Senate Budget Committee marking up the fiscal 2005 budget resolution. Still more embarrassing: It wasn't even live, but a replay of a session the day before. Unfortunately, by the time I finished my paltry few miles, the majority staff director had barely begun his presentation. So I stood on the motionless treadmill to watch the rest of the proceedings until, finally, I felt so self-conscious that I turned it up to a slow walk.
Mine is admittedly an extreme case. You know you've got it bad when that day's segment of the Lyndon Johnson tapes is one you've heard before. Or when you don't watch just the hearing but are glued to the cinema verite footage of all the milling around before and after. Or when you find the Senate quorum call, with its accompanying classical music, a relaxing interlude -- what passes for a Zen moment in Washington.
In our house, C-SPAN is a family affair. I began to suspect that C-SPAN radio was playing a little too often in our car when I was out with my 8-year-old daughter listening to -- what else -- the Florida Democratic Party winter meeting, and I realized that she could identify all the presidential candidates. By voice. The year before, she became so captivated by the Senate Judiciary Committee debate on the Charles Pickering nomination that she woke up the next morning demanding to know how the vote had gone on "that judge guy." Dweebiest part? I was on sabbatical -- and watching the Pickering debate for fun.
As C-SPAN celebrates its 25th anniversary this week, it's hard to remember a time when the notion of televising House proceedings -- that's the way the cable network started -- seemed both silly (who in the world would bother to watch?) and revolutionary (just ask former speaker Newt Gingrich, who catapulted to prominence with the help of C-SPAN). Imagine: Back then, Cable News Network hadn't yet been launched, and only 3.5 million homes were wired to see the debut of the Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network. (Then-Rep. Al Gore was the first member to be televised. And you thought he was present only at the creation of the Internet.)
C-SPAN has since morphed into a veritable conglomerate of nerdiness, with three channels and programming seen in 88 million homes. Now, if the "Washington Journal" on government-sponsored enterprises doesn't grab you, there's always the rebroadcast of the State Department briefing or "Booknotes," vintage 1996.
For journalists (as for lobbyists, government officials and other Washington types), C-SPAN has become an essential tool. For those who, like me, are clumsily juggling work and family, it's a godsend. Along with the rest of the arsenal of technology -- cell phones, voice mail, the Internet, e-mail -- C-SPAN lets working moms be virtually present in two places at once. As I write these words, I have just come in from picking the kids up at school, and the television in my home office is tuned to C-SPAN's broadcast of the full Senate budget debate (even more gripping than the committee markup).
But C-SPAN's importance as a tool of convenience for me and others is dwarfed by its role in promoting the democratization of information over the past decade or so. Information that was once the sole province of journalists to distill and impart is now available, unfiltered, to anyone who cares enough to subject himself to it. And in the past few years, the combination of C-SPAN and the Internet has created a limitless capacity for wonk video-on-demand.
Courtesy of "Road to the White House," for example, a C-SPAN viewer anywhere could get about as good a sense of the candidates as the average Iowa or New Hampshire voter. I had the odd experience this winter of going to a John Kerry chili feed in Nashua, N.H., seeing the same event on C-SPAN and realizing that its cameras actually captured more of the candidate's interaction with voters than I was able to see in person.
And there is an audience for all this information, not all of whom are the -- how to put this politely? -- dedicated types up at the crack of dawn in California to catch every minute of "Washington Journal." A new Pew Research Center survey found that 12 percent of Americans described themselves as regular C-SPAN viewers; 31 percent said they watched occasionally. Those numbers are probably high -- and in any event, C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb grilling a guest in his deadpan staccato style is never going to draw as many viewers as Donald Trump summarily firing people. But for some of us C-SPAN junkies, there's no contest. And anyway, Brian, you have better hair.
The writer is a member of the editorial page staff. Her e-mail address is marcusr@washpost.com.
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