There's so much choice out there--175 channels on a satellite service, there will soon be that same number of choices on cable--you no longer have to march to anybody's drum. And I think that's more important than whether we have changed the coverage itself, because we're just one of very many choices we have on the dial.
Reason: But even so, some personalities have benefitted very much from having access to the airwaves unfiltered. Newt Gingrich, in particular, was a master of using one-minute speeches. Would there have been a Republican Congress had it not been for C-SPAN?
Lamb: I have no idea. I don't think there's any question that Newt Gingrich took full advantage of the opportunity to speak directly to people in the country via C-SPAN, but so did Al Gore. Al Gore used C-SPAN as much as Newt Gingrich did, in a much different way. He was chairman of the committees [in the Senate]. He often would call hearings during recess periods when everybody else went home and we'd cover them in their full five- day sessions. But we're here to be used, and this is the way this country ought to operate--when you're now elected to Congress whether you are a Republican or a Democrat you are assured you can talk back to the constituents via electronic media.
The great frustration in days past was you'd get elected to the House or the Senate, you'd come to Washington, and from that moment forward, if you were going to speak back to your constituents you had to speak back through a television station or a radio station in the community and that reporter in Washington had to give you permission. That's no longer the case.
We fit in by having a direct pipeline back, that, by the way, not everybody watches. There was a time when if ABC, NBC, and CBS carried a president's speech, everybody in the country watched it because they had no other place to go. Those days are over. If you're a president in the future, you'll have to go back to the days of Abraham Lincoln in having to get people's attention through a lot of different ways.
Reason: People generally agree that you do a better job in your pursuit of fairness than has ever been done, but for some people the belief remains that Noam Chomsky or Ralph Reed or others not exactly in the mainstream should be on C-SPAN more. What kind of pressure do you feel to expand the debate outward?
Lamb: Not much, because we have already expanded the debate outward. I'll give you some examples: Every [election] year we cover the Libertarian Party convention in its entirety. We covered the Unity Convention in Atlanta of Hispanics and blacks and [other] minority groups. Before the Million Man March we covered Khalid Muhammad, which made a lot of people furious and outraged.
We have 17,000 hours a year to fill on the two networks, but we only have 25 cameras--that's the real hang-up. We can only afford to do so many things, and there has to be a point where we say, yes-no, yes-no. The public doesn't realize how many mainstream people get "no" because we just don't have the time. And keep in mind that the base of this network, the most important part of it, [is televising] the House and the Senate, in their entirety, every day. Everything else we cover is just icing on the cake.
Reason: What do you think of the talk radio explosion? When the Fairness Doctrine was eliminated in 1987, the percentage of informational formats in radio took off.
Lamb: Deregulation saved FM radio and talk saved AM radio. I'll go a step further--satellite radio will spawn some fabulous opportunities for people. When a car can roll down a road and listen to a satellite channel, I can't wait. C-SPAN's going to be there.
Reason: I beg to differ with you, but knowing how rapidly the FCC licenses new competitors you can wait....
Lamb: (laughter) I like talk radio, I listen all the time. I love being out in my car driving across the country listening to all the different shows. I'm a big fan of the idea, and I don't worry about it. If we can't survive talk radio, we aren't much of a democracy.
There's a sense [in Washington] that only a certain group of people should be controlling the air waves, because they're more responsible and they have the right kind of opinions, and they're not going to take things too far. The great thing about talk radio is, the more you have, the better it is. The more voices you have, the more chance you have of giving everybody a chance to have their say-so, and we'll be a healthier place to live.
I listen to Mario Cuomo on Saturday mornings in Washington, D.C., and I listen to Rush Limbaugh on my radio on the [taped] replay when I get up in the morning, and I listen to Michael Reagan, and I listen to Gloria Allred when I'm in California, and Michael Jackson who we've simulcast on this network, and Tom Leykis from California, who's a big liberal, and Ron Smith from Baltimore--you can just go down the list of all these people. I love to listen to different viewpoints. The last thing I want is a journalist to tell me what I can listen to. I don't want the government to tell me what I can listen to.
I would trust the public at large any day to make a decision over what is good and bad and how many choices there are out there before I would a government based in Washington. And that's not being critical of the government, it's just the nature of the beast. The government feels like it has got to help everybody and protect everybody and to prevent people from hearing things that are bad or negative. And that's not real life.
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