One of the really good guys in news media leaves a great legacy.
Brian Lamb, who created the revolutionary nonprofit cable television network C-Span in the late 1970s and has been its public face ever since, is handing it over to two lieutenants, Rob Kennedy and Susan Swain.
Effective April 1, they will become the co-chief executives of C-Span and Mr. Lamb will become the executive chairman, formalizing a management change that has been years in the making. Mr. Lamb will continue to host “Q&A,” his Sunday night interview program, and will pursue other interests, like teaching.
The announcement will come on Monday, 33 years to the day that C-Span — short for Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network — came onto cable television, predating CNN and ESPN.
C-Span’s commitment to carry every minute of the proceedings of the United States House of Representatives without commercials is taken for granted now, but it was an extraordinary act at the time, since most Americans then saw of Congress only what was reported on the nightly news and in newspapers.
It’s too bad that he couldn’t get Obama to live up to his promise to hold all the ObamaCare proceedings on his network, but . . . nobody could have.
I can’t say that I am a regular watcher, but I do watch when I feel it’s important. What C-SPAN does is far more important than what NPR does. If I were told I could only choose 3 channels on cable, those would be the ones, because there are none as important.
I met Mr. Lamb when he had his educational bus out in front of The Daily Caller at their old digs, and chatted with him. I’d just finished lunch with Jim Treacher (shortly after he was hit by that damned truck) and Becca Glover. They wouldn’t let me take my beer on the bus, but they held it for me, and I had a chat with Mr. Lamb about the arrogance of government types toward regular American citizens. I can say that his views were populist.
I might have spoken with him longer, but Tucker seemed to want to talk, so I let him off the hook, after telling him my dad was a huge fan of his interviewing. He asked what they did. I told him they were retired. He chuckled and said that he figured most of his audience were retirees.
Kathy Adamski on March 18, 2012 at 9:15 pm said:
Brian Lamb cannot be replaced, as evidenced during his slow retreat from his regular roles, bringing in replacements who rarely hold up to his genius.
I attribute C-Span’s loss of quality partly to their lack of intellectual curiosity, knowledge, or depth of perception and impartiality Brian Lamb has.
Some replacements blatently show bias. Others just aren’t there mentally 100%.
The other reason it is less watchable is the scripted zombies who call over and over with a different name and location, but exactly the same voice heard minutes earlier because the moderator is oblivious or else won’t cut them off.
A classic has ended.
KingShamus on March 19, 2012 at 1:09 am said:
Sad to see Mr. Lamb go.
For me, he was the best interviewer I’ve ever watched. Dude always asked great questions. Even better, he didn’t ask questions that lasted longer than the interviewee’s answer.