Brian Lamb: Medium Cool
People have mistaken him for John McCain. People have mistakenly thought he’s been off the airwaves for years. And inside the Beltway, where egos are the size of Montgolfier balloons, Brian Lamb doesn’t have a problem with any of that. The founder and CEO of C-SPAN believes that if he can’t retire from the airwaves without a big fuss by viewers, the channel isn’t the no-star vehicle he designed it to be.
C-SPAN began in 1979 with a no-brand brand: all governing, all the time, no jokes, no spin. Its reach now includes three channels, radio, a video archive and a big Web presence. Lamb is working for the day that C-SPAN goes interactive on the Internet, and viewers can click to see details about a politician’s history, right down to campaign contributions. The C-SPAN bus travels the country, its staff, like Lamb, doing a lot more listening than talking.
C-SPAN’s stars are the callers, and the politicians. Sometimes, they’re one and the same. Ted Kennedy used to phone in. Ronald Reagan did, too, a couple of times, when he was in the White House. So has Cher. In D.C.’s cacophonous and venomous media mash-up, Lamb is Mr. On-the-One-Hand-On-the-Other-Hand, and makes sure he never overplays either one.
You didn’t like the name C-SPAN at first?
The name was I guess the best at the time for what we were trying to do: Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network. I would have called it USA Network. Didn’t think of it at the time.
Is it part of the C-SPAN charter that hosts have to be great stone faces?
There’s nothing written down. From the beginning we wanted to be neutral, really neutral, to the point where we’ve been made fun of. We try very hard to stay out of it so the public doesn’t say, “Oh, you’re on one side or another.” It doesn’t matter how hard you try, by the way — they think you’re on a side. When I first got to Washington, I spent two years in the Johnson White House, and later three years in the Nixon [administration]. I’ve often chuckled over that because, depending on what side you’re on, you read just that I was in [with] Johnson or Nixon. I’ve never been a member of a political party, but people will superimpose on you what they want.
So a host’s personality does not give a C-SPAN show its tenor?
The host can have a personality, but it reflects how they want to guide the show, not how they think or whether they’re funny or any of that. It’s a call-in show, it’s not a host-driven show, and it’s different than every other show on purpose.
Some caller was recently spouting pretty racist stuff and the host didn’t bat an eye.
That particular call, Jon Stewart picked up on and made an issue of it. Our host, who’s really a good guy, basically sat there when a guy complained that there were too many black callers. He made the mistake of saying to him, “I respect your point of view.” He really didn’t mean it. When you sit there every day and take 60 calls — and we do have a quota that you have to take 60 calls in three hours — sometimes you zone out, and that’s what happened. It was really a wakeup call for our folks. We say to our hosts if somebody’s going off on a racist rant or an anti-Semitic rant, cut ‘em off, that’s not what we’re there for.
I’ve read that you think callers have become more strident and more partisan.
It happened probably during the Clinton years. We split our callers [phone lines], Democrat versus Republican versus independent, which was painful to do, but because there was so much dislike among conservatives for Bill Clinton for different reasons, they would dominate the show, and that’s not what we felt we were there for. Fox News came in in 1996, so did MSNBC, and that began another revolution.
Do you lose audience to those left- and right-wing shows?
The answer is yes. The excitement that some people saw in us in the early years went away when they could find a place that they could go to every day that represented their views. We have more voices from more points of view on the C-SPAN call-in show than I’ve heard anywhere else. You can literally tune us in every day and hear it all. You can’t control it, and you shouldn’t control it. Unfortunately a lot of call-in shows are controlled, they’re over-controlled. There’s one major national show where they literally take the call and call them back to make sure they can control, not necessarily what they say but the kind of person who gets on. Control always gets you in trouble.
Are members of Congress so accustomed to the cameras that they’re no longer consciously aware of them?
Oh no, they’re very aware of the cameras: Bingo, there’s a camera in this room. Once in a while it’s human nature [that] you forget, but I think most people know.
Do people try to game C-SPAN?
Oh sure. There’ve been boiler-room setups by different organizations to make sure they get heard, but no matter how hard they try, there are too many people trying to get in for them to control the long-term message.
Are developing countries creating their own C-SPANs?
There are attempts all over the world. The big mistake is thinking government should do it. You should never have government control. That is a ticket to disaster.
Do the parodies bother you?
The people who are making fun of us are serious people, even though they’re about comedy. They’re very clever, and that’s always been much to our benefit. We have a recognition factor of over 75, 80%. Some of them curl their lip when they hear [C-SPAN], but whether it’s “Saturday Night Live” or Stewart or Colbert or other comedy programs, it’s helped us to educate the public.
What has the end of the Fairness Doctrine meant?
I think the Fairness Doctrine was an artificial device used by the right and the left to browbeat the electronic media. And they used the hook of the Federal Communications Commission license as a device to say the Fairness Doctrine will give us fairness. It didn’t then and it wouldn’t now. The real answer, I’ve felt, is unlimited number of channels and that’s what we have today — Internet, DVD, e-mail, YouTube, all that — so the idea of the Fairness Doctrine today is just perfectly ridiculous. People keep bringing the idea back, but there is no way to regulate it, period.
Why do you think you’re so dispassionate?
Probably watching the television networks in my lifetime be anything but dispassionate, and the fact that they would tell you they were. There are very few things that I have made up my mind about; that’s part of what I think a journalist should be, but it’s also a matter of age. Some people when they get older are so firm in their beliefs that you’ll never move them. I just happen to have gone the other way. Having listened to both sides over the years, I know less of what I believe today than I ever have. Dogmatism is hard for me to endorse because I just think you get yourself in trouble if you’re absolutely certain of the answer all the time.
What have you made up your mind about?
That there’s a significant lack of interest [by] people elected to office to manage the money of the United States properly. It’s gotten so far away from us, I’m not sure we’ll ever pull back from it. It’s a very strange feeling to have been there so long and watched the money thing become dominant. They feign interest in things that aren’t money-oriented, but in the end, money dominates every aspect of Washington life. Lobbyists can’t necessarily influence the outcome of a huge issue, but they can sure influence the attachments [to legislation]. The average person has no idea what [that] does. That’s probably the most dangerous part of what goes on in Washington.
And there’s campaign money too.
Members have to have so much of it to run, and everybody works around the rules. They mean it when they tell you they don’t like it. Nobody wants to spend their days begging for money. Even those who get elected aren’t happy in the process.
Speaking of money, what’s C-SPAN’s budget?
Sixty million dollars a year, six cents a month per satellite and cable subscriber. A hundred million homes can watch it — these are very rough numbers. I like to say that about 10% watch. They’re more oriented toward political, government information than that other 90%. About 30% will pay attention when something affects them. Then there’s that 60% who basically don’t pay much attention at all. It’s a thrill for me to have people come up and say, “I’m a watcher,” and you find out they maybe have a high school education, but they’re very knowledgeable. You can also find PhDs who have no idea what’s going on.
Who owns C-SPAN?
It technically belongs to the world of charity; it’s a 501(c)3 tax-exempt nonprofit company. The [cable] industry controls how much money we get, but they leave us alone.
What do you think about the civility debate? Things can get very ugly, and bipartisanship has become a dirty word.
People with strong disagreements ought to state them, and the idea that civility is “Everybody gets along” is a misnomer. We truly believe in the 1st Amendment, and we believe in confrontation and the free flow of ideas.
You’re such an optimist.
There’s a lot of me that’s a pessimist, but I say we’re going to solve these problems. And there are some tremendous young people, and like the guy with the shovel with the elephants in the circus, they’re going to come up behind and figure out a way [to clean up the mess].
A book about you is called “How C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb Changed Politics in America.” Have you?
I think technology has changed America, not any one organization. Technology is taking the power away from the few. There’ll be a lot more choices, and good people who are doing serious stuff will survive and there’ll be a lot more voices, and that is very healthy.
Why do people give you Tweety Birds?
Some people have [said] I look like Tweety, so all of a sudden I’ve got 35 of them in my office. I like Tweety [but] I’m really a bigger fan of Droopy Dog. I have a little statue of him in the office, he’s holding up this sign that says, “I’m so happy.”
What do you read for pleasure?
I can spend forever with newspapers.
Please do!
There’s no more exciting thing than having a five-hour plane ride and having three or four newspapers in hand.
This interview was edited and excerpted from a longer taped transcript. An archive of Morrison’s interviews is online at latimes.com/pattasks.
