CollegeNews
Brian Lamb receives Gaylord Prize
Cable television pioneer brought government to the people BY SARAH THOMAS
B
rian Lamb was interested in broadcast from the very beginning, building a crystal radio set as a child. As he grew up, Lamb searched for any radio stations and television jobs he could get in his hometown of Lafayette, Ind. As the founder and CEO of C-SPAN, the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, Lamb has
had a long and successful career as a self-described social entrepreneur. Since the creation of C-SPAN in 1979, the network has expanded to include three television stations, a radio station and multiple live-streaming websites. As the first person to open up Congress and broadcast coverage to the American people, Lamb is described as a true patriot by Gaylord College Dean Joe Foote. “If you sit down and listen to him, he will be one of the most inspiring people in your life. It’s a rarity today to find people who love their country so much,” Foote says. Lamb understands that for a government system to work, it needs highly informed citizens. “What he’s done is kind of made it easier to be an informed citizen,” former Norman City Council Member and Honors College Dean David Ray says. “He’s trying to help the system work better.” In a politically saturated culture, C-SPAN delivers information about politics and government that is unfiltered. “It’s refreshing to have someone who has set a standard at C-SPAN for being bipartisan, nonpartisan and promoting a civil political dialogue,” Foote says. It is for his transformative effect on journalism that Lamb received the Gaylord Prize. Previous recipients of the prize are Jim Lehrer of PBS and New York Times writer Thomas L. Friedman. Lamb is the third recipient. Lamb has served as C-SPAN’s chief executive officer since founding it, when the idea of cable network didn’t exist. Up until C-SPAN, there wasn’t cable television, only broadcast networks. Thirty-five years later, C-SPAN faces off competitively against other news networks like CNN and FOX while still remaining politically neutral. Lamb says he had a vision of broadcasting gavel-to-gavel the U.S. Congress to the American public. This idea had been presented to the House before, first in 1949, but it was passed down each time. “There was little sentiment for letting television cameras in the Congress,” Foote says. “Most members saw that as only negative. That changed with Brian Lamb. Many had failed before him.
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He had the double challenge of having to convince Congress that it should open its doors to cameras and creating a television network before content-based television networks had a form.” With cable industry knowledge and experience working for the Congress as a Senate press secretary, Lamb was able to gain the support of both institutions, but without a manual for how to do so. C-SPAN was formed as a nonprofit channel that broadcasted Congress. C-SPAN does not sell advertising on any of its stations or networks. It is an independent network that neither the Congress nor the cable industry has any content control over, a quality that is hard to come by today. After graduating from Purdue University in 1963, Lamb joined the Navy at the age of 22. Lamb believes that joining the Navy was the best thing he ever did because the Navy offered him more responsibility than anything else would at that age. During his four years of service, Lamb worked in the White House in the Johnson administration and in the Pentagon public affairs office during the Vietnam War. Lamb encourages college graduates to experiment in the professional world while they are young. Upon his graduation from college, Lamb says that there were very limited choices as to where to go in the media world. New media have broken down the barriers of entry to media for current students and graduates. “If you’re a student today, all you need is a cause or an idea and you don’t have to ask anybody’s permission,” Lamb says. “You don’t have to wait until somebody thinks your idea makes sense. You can try it out on the Web and you can use television, print and all the different forms of communication and give it a shot.” In the beginning, Lamb hosted a daily program and was responsible as the chief executive officer of the new network. C-SPAN has grown to employ 270 people. Like most founding CEOs, Lamb has instilled within C-SPAN employees his ideals. “He has set a tone at the top of that organization that very much reflects his personality: no ego,” Foote says. “You can tell the founder really makes a difference. They have a certain ethic;