C-SPAN Crosses the Ocean to Bring Live Broadcasts From House of Commons

Cable television’s C-SPAN, which has shown live proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives since 1979, on Tuesday will do likewise from a somewhat older place--Britain’s House of Commons.

On that day, which starts with an address by Queen Elizabeth II to the new session of Parliament that C-SPAN will carry live at 2:30 a.m. PST, the occasionally raucous Commons will open its proceedings to television.

The experiment will last until at least next July, after which the legislators in the 650-seat Commons will vote on whether to make TV permanent.

“It’s unlikely that they won’t continue it unless there’s a major row,” C-SPAN Chairman Brian Lamb predicted in a phone interview from London, where he’s overseeing a series of live telecasts slated for this week.

C-SPAN last week dispatched a staff to London for a week of preliminary interviews, including call-ins from American viewers. Among those fielding questions is John Grist, who oversees the Commons’ eight-camera TV system.

For C-SPAN, a nonprofit industry-supported cooperative that says it is seen in 46.8 million homes and offices, Tuesday may prove a legislative tale of two cities, one that enables viewers to see differences in at least the oratory of lawmakers in London and Washington.

If the American House still is in session Tuesday, a C-SPAN spokesman says, “we will go live to the U.S. House and air that in its entirety, then pick up the British House in progress. Then, that evening, we’ll air the British House (proceedings) in its entirety.”

No video bundle from Britain is scheduled for Wednesday. But on Thanksgiving, at 6:30 a.m. PST, C-SPAN will air, live, another Commons session in its entirety.

“It might go eight or 10 hours,” Lamb says. “It’s a good chance for people who are busy on Tuesday to just tune in, just look at it.”

On Sunday, C-SPAN will show taped highlights of the week.

The real action--C-SPAN hopes to show it live--will come Nov. 28 at 7:15 a.m. PST, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher faces opposition Labor leader Neil Kinnock for a 15-minute “question time” session.

Such sessions, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, are rarely sedate and usually rife with riposte.

Unlike the comparatively tame give and take of the U.S. House, question time in the Commons “is meant to be confrontational,” Lamb notes.