This is the third and final installment in a multipart series with Brian Lamb (LA’63, HDR LA’86), the founder of C-SPAN. Lamb retired from his day-to-day responsibilities with C-SPAN in 2019. The Brian Lamb School of Communication was named for him in 2011.
It’s pretty easy to flip past C-SPAN when you’re channel surfing. The yeas are 57, the nos are 41, and two abstain. Hardly high drama.
“People love to call us boring,” laughs Brian Lamb. And that’s fine with Lamb—as long as people remember that those yeas and nos have very real consequences for everyday Americans.
“This town spends your money,” Lamb says. “And if you don’t watch how your money is being spent, it will get away from us.”
After a decade in Washington, DC, Lamb had seen enough of how politicians of all stripes spun the truth to further their own agendas. At the time, the information accessible to the American public was largely limited to the big three television networks.
“This was the way that the government set it up from the very beginning of radio and then onto television—and it didn’t have to be that way,” Lamb explains.
Lamb’s experience working in the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy with Clay Whitehead during the Nixon administration was transformative.
“Whitehead led the way,” Lamb recalls. “He was the leader of the revolution that led to the domestic satellite television system. That led to the continuing revolution of choice and information available to the average citizen.”
The time spent working with Whitehead ultimately led Lamb to conceive of C-SPAN.
“This was incredibly important to me because he had a very smart group of people around him. I was the least educated of all of them—they were lawyers and folks with PhDs and policy developers, and I was a journalist,” reflects Lamb. “I was in the middle of all that, watching these very bright people figure out how to change the government, governmental regulations, and laws so that this could be opened up. That began my real up-close education about how communication works.”
C-SPAN’s Enduring Legacy
Lamb estimates that C-SPAN’s role is less integral to the 24-hour news cycle than as it is to the longue durée—a broader historical perspective. He cites the C-SPAN Archives, located in West Lafayette under the direction of Robert Browning, as a key example.
“The archives will be one of the most important things that we do. It is history. It allows us to go back and look at what happened in 1980, 1990, or 2000 through an unfiltered lens. If you want to know exactly what somebody said, it’s available to you online. It’s available to you in our archives. You don’t have to rely on anybody between you and the information.”
The C-SPAN Archives has been a part of West Lafayette for more than 30 years, but in 2011, Lamb stepped up his involvement with the University even more. Just like C-SPAN was ahead of its time, so was Lamb’s teaching—which was done remotely.
“It wasn’t Zoom at the time—we had our own television hookup,” he quips.
Throughout the past decade, Lamb has maintained his level of commitment to the University and its students, whether it involves teaching or welcoming Purdue students and alumni to Washington, DC, as interns.
Not all of Lamb’s students start out as news junkies or politicos. Lamb recalls one in particular who underwent a huge transformation during his time in the classroom.
“He started out in class, and his number one vehicle of information was ESPN,” Lamb recalls. “By the time he was finished, it was POLITICO. And he came to Washington, he worked here, he worked at the Heritage Foundation, he worked in the administration. Students begin to figure out what they’re interested in and where to go for the information. That’s the best thing to watch.”
Student enthusiasm isn’t a rarity, either. In the spring of 2020, Lamb co-taught alongside Connie Doebele, managing director for the Center for C-SPAN Scholarship & Engagement in West Lafayette. The students were so passionate about the course material that they asked to continue meeting regularly even after the class was over.
“The students were outstanding,” Lamb shares. “We had about 20 of them, and I’m still very much involved with them through Connie because they’ve created a student community—I’m going to be speaking with them on a Zoom call tonight.”