If you are one of the many people who have cut the cable cord, you may have noticed it is now difficult to enjoy the cable industry’s greatest gift to our democracy: C-SPAN. Despite repeated pressure, the largest streaming alternatives to cable television, YouTube TV, Hulu, and Fubo, are all still refusing to carry the channels. C-SPAN is a volunteer gift to the public from corporate America, and we do not want to change that. But we do encourage the streaming services to rethink their decision for the good of the country.
The exact details of how the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, which was created by journalist Brian Lamb as a nonprofit organization in 1979, is funded are a trade secret, but essentially, each cable company pays a certain amount every year based on how many subscribers they have. C-SPAN first started with gavel-to-gavel coverage of the House of Representatives, then the Senate with C-SPAN2. Now it offers a wide range of public policy coverage and original programming both on C-SPAN3 and online.
Unlike its cable television funders, C-SPAN has somehow always maintained a true objective reporting standard, making it must-see viewing whenever either chamber of Congress is in session. Additionally, as a nonprofit entity, C-SPAN is commercial-free, thus allowing for uninterrupted coverage.
At its peak, approximately 100 million households had access to C-SPAN through either their cable or satellite television provider. But as millions of people have ended their cable or satellite subscriptions, far fewer households now access C-SPAN. The tens of millions of people who now rely on streaming services for their news are left without a C-SPAN option.
In response to criticism from consumers and lawmakers for not adding C-SPAN to their offered channels, YouTube TV correctly points out that much of C-SPAN’s content is already available on its YouTube page. While this is technically true, the clips available on C-SPAN’s YouTube channel are not live and are generally shorter in nature than the full-length, gavel-to-gavel coverage offered on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN also cannot offer its live coverage for free because that would undercut its existing funding from the cable and satellite providers. There is not enough interest in C-SPAN to justify adding it to its list of channels, according to YouTube TV, but considering the $350 billion in revenue YouTube TV’s parent company, Alphabet, pulled in last year, paying a couple of cents per YouTube TV subscriber doesn’t seem like a prohibitive expense, especially when YouTube TV’s cable and satellite competitors are already paying it, as they have been for decades.
We recognize that while Alphabet’s revenues are impressive, it is not a charity. However, considering that Alphabet’s mission statement is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” making what is happening in the House and Senate immediately available to as many people as possible should fall within that goal.
There simply is no other organization that offers as comprehensive a package of government proceedings as C-SPAN, including not just congressional floor debates but also congressional hearings, press conferences, federal agency announcements, Supreme Court oral arguments, and even campaign events.
Considering how much criticism Alphabet already takes for eating up online ad revenues without contributing anything to news production, adding C-SPAN to its YouTube TV lineup should be an easy choice.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
