An accidental victim: greed is the culprit.

• Author: Lamb, Brian
• Position: Effects of new telecommunications law on C-SPAN and C-SPAN2, non-profit news and public affairs television networks - Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network - Includes a related article

You would think the folks in Congress, the FCC, and other agencies in Washington would like C-SPAN. Our two networks, C-SPAN and C-SPAN2, provide millions of Americans with round-the-clock, ad-free coverage of news and public affairs events, including the floor proceedings of the U.S. House and Senate. Most everything we cover is televised from beginning to end, without interruptions or commentary. Every year, we transmit over 17,000 hours of programming, all aimed at informing viewers about our American system.

Our networks were created by just the kind of public-service iniative the government purports to foster: Without prodding by government mandate, cable television leaders created C-SPAN in 1979 to operate entirely within the private sector as a nonprofit company. Over the next 18 years, these same leaders have contributed more than $230 million to C-SPAN, and have not taken a penny of taxpayer money to support the project. Just as significantly, they set aside one or two of the highly-sought-after channels on their cable systems to carry C-SPAN.

From our first day of operation, C-SPAN programming has easily met the government's public-interest standard (the general legal standard radio and television broadcasters must meet in order to keep their right to use the public's airwaves). Despite that, it has been an upside-down world for C-SPAN whenever government policy is at issue--whether Democrats or Republicans were in charge. At a time when the major commercial networks are being prodded by Congress to serve the public interest with just 3 hours of children's programming per week, it's nothing short of ironic that the government keeps throwing regulatory roadblocks in our path.

Among the most egregious examples: the 1992 resurrection of an old rule requiring cable operators to carry local broadcast stations on their systems. The idea, successfully lobbied by the broadcast industry, was to preserve local broadcasting as cable's market dominance grew. This "must carry" rule might sound reasonable, but it put the federal government into the programming business--a questionable action on First Amendment grounds. And it had an unintended consequence: 3 million homes lost all or part of the C-SPAN networks.

Here's how it happened: "Must carry" forced systems to carry broadcast stations--even when hardly anybody watched them--just because they had a license to operate in a nearby area. Network affiliates were required to add nearby affiliates with programming nearly identical to stations they already carried. With limited channel capacity, a number of cable companies were forced to drop channels to comply with the rule. Some chose to drop C-SPAN. So several million cable subscribers are now able to watch a couple of extra shopping channels, or the same commercial...