MS. SONJA HILLGREN (Moderator): (Sounds gavel.) Good afternoon. Welcome to the National Press Club. My name is Sonja Hillgren. I am president of the National Press Club and editor of Farm Journal. I'd like to welcome club members in the audience today, as well as your guests, those of you listening on public radio and watching on C-SPAN.

Before introducing our head table, I would like to remind our members of upcoming speakers. Tomorrow we will hear from Henry Cisneros, secretary of Housing and Urban Development as he leaves the Clinton Cabinet. On Wednesday, Senators Feingold and McCain will discussed proposed legislation for campaign finance reform. On Wednesday, January 15th, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman will discuss his vision of the future of agriculture. And on Friday, January 17th, Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, will give a speech entitled "24 Years After Roe: The Moral Underpinnings of Abortion Politics." Other speakers in January will be: Marvin Hamlisch on the 21st, Yitzhak Perlman on the 22nd and on January 30th, Congressman Gephardt and Senator Daschle will speak about the 105th Congress.

Transcripts and audio and videotapes of National Press Club luncheons are available by calling 1-800-NPC-2334. If you have any questions for our speaker, please write them on the cards at your table and pass them up to me. I will ask as many as time permits. I would like now to introduce our head table guests, and ask them to stand briefly when their names are called. From your right, Beryl Anderson, national director of communications for Rosa Parks and television network logistics deputy director for the Presidential Inaugural Committee; Carol Leonig (ph), Washington correspondent, Charlotte Observer; George Watson, ABC Television; James Warren, Washington bureau chief, the Chicago Tribune; Llewellyn King, publisher, White House Daily; Professor John Splaine, University of Maryland and C-SPAN consultant; Peggy Roberson, free-lance journalist and chairman of the National Press Club Speakers Committee; Henry Rosenthal, owner, WASK Radio in Lafayette, Indiana; Al Warren, editor and publisher, Warren Publishing, Inc.; Ted Hearn, Washington editor, Multichannel News; Betty Duckert, NBC Television; Deborah Kalb, reporter, Gannett News Service; and, Judith Serrin, Knight-Ridder Newspapers and the Speakers Committee member who arranged today's lunch. (Applause.)

Brian Lamb has brought democracy to television. He and his C- SPAN cameras have made it possible for people around the country to see their political leaders run for office, argue the issues, compromise in committee and cast their votes. It is a violation of the adage that no one should watch laws or sausage being made. But for millions of viewers it is interesting -- even addictive. Mr. Lamb is a Lafayette, Indiana native, a graduate of Purdue University and a Navy veteran. He worked as a radio reporter and press spokesman at the Pentagon, and for a Republican senator, Peter Dominick (sp) of Colorado. He was assistant to the director of the Office of Telecommunications Policy in the Nixon White House. While working at Cablevision -- while working as Cablevision magazine's Washington bureau chief, Mr. Lamb conceived of the idea of C-SPAN, a cable-industry financed, non-profit network to televise the House. The cable satellite public affairs network, which is what C-SPAN stands for, began in 1979, with four employees and one telephone line, both to handle business and to field calls from viewers.

Early on Mr. Lamb had to share a satellite with the Madison Square Garden Network, and even got bumped off the air on occasion by pro wrestling. (Laughter.) But C-SPAN soon became an institution. It gained fans -- like President Reagan, journalists, public officials, and its core constituency, concerned Americans who want more than 30-second sound bites for news. Ninety-eight percent of C- SPAN viewers vote. The networks began televising the Senate in 1986. It gave Americans gavel-to-gavel coverage of political conventions, campaign debates, nightly translations of the Moscow Evening News, and some 75 National Press Club luncheons each year that give speakers from world leaders to Hollywood stars a chance to get across a message unedited. Now there are three C-SPAN channels and the possibility of two more, and more

than 65 million cable subscribers. It has been called Joe Friday television: "Just the facts." Mr. Lamb is so insistent that C-SPAN employees retain their objectivity that he even tells them to keep their opinions to themselves in the hallways in C-SPAN offices located just north of the Capitol. Mr. Lamb describes the network as an "O.J.-Free Zone." (Laughter.) And it very much reflects the personality and interests of Mr. Lamb, America's chief listener. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm National Press Club welcome to Brian Lamb of C-SPAN.

MR. BRIAN LAMB (C-SPAN Chairman & CEO):

We started covering these National Press Club luncheon speeches on January the 3rd, 1980. Paul Volcker was the first speaker. And I am the 1,200th -- let me see, 1,122nd speaker I think since that time. I never intended to be up here doing this. I'm not so sure I want to be here today. But I'll try to make the best of it.

I thought you might be interested in knowing first up how these kind of things happen. I came back from lunch one day and picked up the phone and there was a fellow on the other end of the line. And those of you who know him will know that what I am about to do is not a slight, but this man is from Oklahoma, originally, and he's a good friend. His colleague for many years, Al Warren, is sitting right over here. And it was Tack Nail -- and that is his name, Tack Nail. His lovely wife, Joanne, is here with us today. His first name is really Dawson. He has a brother named Shingle and a brother named Spike, I'm told. I picked up the phone and I said, 'Yes?' and Tack said, 'Lambert' --he calls me Lambert --'they want you to speak at the Press Club.' And I said, 'Tack, I don't want to speak at the Press Club. It's the same audience that we have on the network all the time, and they won't quite understand it.' He said, 'Lambert, they want you to speak at the Press Club. They say you won't return your phone calls to Peggy.'

Well, I talked it over with him and we both agreed that I wouldn't speak at the Press Club. But I did say to him in the end 'Look, I've got a book coming out in April, and if they're really interested, I'll come back and we'll talk about the book. The book's all about "Booknotes." So I thought it was over. And about a week later, a phone call comes in. 'Lambert, they won't let you promote your book at the book at the Press Club, and they won't take no for an answer. And you owe me a big favor anyway, and I want you to do this.' And I took a big, deep breath and I said, 'OK. I'll do it, as long as you're there.' And Tack Nail said, 'I'll be there,' and he's not here today.

Now here's the favor I owe Tack Nail, because it has a lot to do with this club. Right back there, if you go right through those doors, in the corner, on October 7th, 1980, was the first ever national television call-in show. It started right back there. Charlie Ferris had been out here. He was the chairman of the FCC and he gave his speech. He came back and he sat down at the table. And this was going to be our first ever live interview from outside of our little, tiny studio over in Arlington. And they gave me the cue--and I swear to God, this happened -- I said, 'Welcome, Charlie Ferris, chairman of the FCC,' and all the lights and all the power blew. I mean, what an embarrassing thing -- here you are with the chairman of the FCC.

So we ran around and got the lights back up, and then we had our first call-in show. It was with Tack Nail, along with Don West, Michael Kelly from George Mason University and Pat Gushman from Cablevision magazine. My strategy was, because it was our first call-in show, that if it worked, Don West and Tack Nail would go back and write in their publications about this. Well, it worked, but nobody went back to their publications and wrote about it. But Tack Nail sat there with everybody for two hours, and that really was the beginning of what has turned into being a national experience that a lot of people have, not just on C-SPAN, but a lot of different channels -- the call-in show. And some people, as you know, don't really care that much for it, but it's an important talk back to this town.

Congress comes in tomorrow. It's the 210th year, they'll begin the 105th Congress. By the way, I'm a numbers guy, and I'll be throwing a lot of numbers at you. If you like numbers, you can get our your pen and pencil and write them down because I look at the world through numbers. Tomorrow, when they raise their hand, it'll be the 11,536th person to ever take the oath in the House of Representatives in the history of this country, and it will be the 1,221st senator. And the interesting thing for us is that there are only 43 members of the US House of Representatives that knew what it was like before television. Only 43 members were there before television came in 1979.

It's my 20th year starting. It's the 18th year for C-SPAN. And the way we got onto doing the Press Club speeches was we didn't have any money. We were outfitted over in Arlington. We flipped the switch for the House of Representatives. It always was a dream of mine to be able to hear speeches in their entirety from start to finish, and the Press Club is a fabulous forum to do that. I didn't have any money, so I had to find some way to do this inexpensively. I found a guy named Forrest Boyd -- some of you may know, he was in the basement of this building. Forrest had a camera and some lights. And I went to Forrest and I said, 'I got a problem. I need some way to get a camera in front of these speakers and put it on the C-SPAN network. It'll be the first real different thing that we would do for the network.'

'Forrest' -- I said, 'Forrest, how much is this going to cost me?' I grew up in Indiana and Forrest was the anchorman on Channel 13 when I was growing up. So here he was in Washington, DC, ; he had been with Mutual Broadcasting and he'd gone out on his own. Forrest said, 'I'll charge you $200 a speech,' and that was for the camera and the lights and the tape and a guy on a bicycle to bring it up to you on Capitol Hill. That's how it started and it hasn't changed since then. It's the same basic premise that it was then: one camera in front of a speaker here at this podium, having a chance to say what they think and believe. I've always thanked Forrest for that and he didn't make any money off of that. He believed in what we were doing at that time, and he's a great guy; I haven't seen him for a number of years. I just want to thank him for what he did for us in those early days.

They always want you to have a title for a speech, and so, after fussing around with it, we came up with a title, Debunking the Myths About C-SPAN. I'm not sure that the myths are in anybody's head but ours but I've got about six of them that I want to answer.

But first I thought you might be interested in some viewer comments. Anybody who has watched our call-in shows knows that we're constantly hearing from our audience, and this town is constantly accused of being too conservative, too liberal, the bias, whatever the word you want to use. We have a fabulous group of people who sit there all day long and take calls from the audience at large, not on the air, but to help them with the schedule and to listen to what they have to say about the world. And we keep a record of it. We don't put their names by it or anything but we just look and see what people are saying.

So I went back, I got a bunch of them. Marge Amey, who's in charge of our Viewer Services desk, and Dave Ficeli and Colleen Carey sit there and answer phones all day. They hear some of the darndest things. Now this leads up to the myth thing, but they hear things that we don't see, and I thought I just might share them with you. You know, it's in the category of 'kids say the darndest things' -- people say the darndest things.

First one up--and you're allowed to laugh anytime you think this is funny. If you don't, just sit there on your hands and I'll get through it very quickly. These are the kind of things people say--they leave voice-mails, they tell our folks. And they truly do see the world in different ways on all different sides.

First one: 'The articulate people out here in Beverly Hills cannot get through on your call-in program. All I get is that weird fax number. And somebody is trying to screen out educated, articulate people so all we can listen to is little old ladies. I've hired a private detective to find out about this.'

'When I ask my nephews if they want to watch "Barney" or C-SPAN, they always

pick C-SPAN because they like your bus. Isn't that a nice compliment from

fourth- and fifth-graders?'

'Why don't you ever take calls from West Virginia?'

'How come the coffee mug I ordered isn't as pretty as Susan's? My mug is smaller and doesn't have as much yellow in it.'

'You finally got a conservative on your show, and wouldn't you know it? My cable went out.'

'I promise to send you a postcard every day from now on saying how great you are if C-SPAN will just allow one program without any calls on your morning show.'

'Don't alternate calls from Republicans and Democrats. When the other people do their cheerleading, I turn on mute. When my side comes on, I watch it. So now I only get to hear half the program, and it's all your fault.'

Here's a beaut: 'Will you show the vice presidential debates again? I was watching the Braves game.'

'I heard you share a channel with the Bravo channel so I was wondering if you could give this letter to someone from that station? I want to know if "Twin Peaks" will be on in the future.'

'I fell asleep during the House debate, and when I woke up, the voting was done. Could you show the debate again?'

'You've taken a once-proud product into a liberal septic tank. Maybe the Beltway sucked your spine out.'

'God save the queen and pass the Republican ticket.'

'Pan the chambers. Some of the women have great legs.' I swear to God, that's what they said.

This is my favorite. Listen carefully and think about this. 'Put the Moscow news back on. I don't trust our liberal media and must watch the news from Moscow to find the truth out about what is going on in the United States.'

'How can I get on C-SPAN? I'm an expert in a lot of areas and I've written many times, but no one has called me.'

'I know women are working there at C-SPAN and they're going to ruin it, just like they ruin everything else.'

'Who is in charge of those little words across the bottom of the screen? They keep putting them across the queen's jewels and I want to see the jewels.'

'Thirty-nine ninety-five for a tape? I could get a good skin flick cheaper than that.'

This is another good one: 'C-SPAN should not be aired in other countries. It is treasonous for our enemies to know our internal problems.'

Now this one applies to a lot of different politicians that they call in about, and they use the same language: 'Please run a crawler when Gephardt is speaking'--that could be replaced with Gingrich -- 'that says "If his lips are moving, he's lying."'

'Change your name to The Robert K. Dornan Network.' He appears on your channel ad nauseam. Enough is enough.'

Now listen to this one. 'Senator McCain is so dang biased about the POW/MIA issue.' Can you imagine?

'I'm almost as old as Bob Dole. I wouldn't want a man with my memory to be president.'

Then there's the wrong number. Marge said that they think they've got another network. Here's the kind of things we get:

'When do you re-air the "News Hour with Jim Lehrer"?'

'I want to purchase three of item 605-109, the sweater coat.'

'What's with all those car commercials? C-SPAN 2 has become mostly sports. What happened to you?'

'"Meet the Press"--is it going to be repeated?'

'What is the 800 number that I call in order to order the automatic bicycle that you advertised at 3 AM last night?'

This is the last one of these. We also did a congressional survey they told us a lot of things off the record. They wrote it down, but they didn't give us their name.

'You provide a great public service. Without you, all those callers would have to pile their manure in their own backyards. Except for polluting the airwaves with call-ins, we do appreciate what you do.'

Those are all true. They really are. That's straight from Marge Amey and her crew.

Let me go through these myths kind of fast so we can get to questions. There are six of them.

C-SPAN cameras televise the Congress. Wrong. In the early days, when Tip O'Neill started it up, he wouldn't let private cameras in for a lot of different reasons. The cameras in the chambers are owned and operated by the House or the Senate with taxpayers' money. We sent a letter to Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich back in 1994 and asked to put our own cameras in. Bob Dole put out a press release saying 'We'll get right on it.' Never heard from him again. And Speaker Gingrich has yet to answer the letter. We've had some meetings but we don't look to having our private cameras in there very quickly.

We've just done a survey of the House and 48 percent said they support media cameras in the chambers; 30 percent oppose the idea; 22 percent had no opinion.

Here's what else we found out: 31 percent think we are under contract to cover the House and Senate; we're not, we're just like every other news organization. Forty-eight percent watch more than five hours a week; probably a lot of that's in their offices, although I'm sure they watch it back home. Ninety-five percent said our programming had no bias; 3 percent, I think, thought it was too liberal and 1 percent too conservative. Eighty-six percent told us the volume of correspondence had increased because of C-SPAN - that wouldn't surprise you - and ninety-one percent said that was a good thing. Although 63 percent told us that Congress' image had been enhanced by the C-SPAN coverage, 6 percent said it had been harmed. Sevem percent said it had been both harmed and had benefited and 24 percent were not sure.

Myth number two, this is a favorite of sportswriters and "Saturday Night Live," is that C-SPAN only has one camera. It's true. It's absolutely right -- (C-SPAN camera operator) Garney Gary's standing right behind it. Right back there. Wave to them, Garney. See it. That is our single camera. And these aren't even our microphones. Not -- not really true. I'm just kidding.

We have--18 years later--39 cameras and 240 people. Every day, seven crews of five people go out with two and three cameras to cover the hearings. J this last year we started a new series of programming from around the country that we're very excited about. And we now have seven bureaus in eight cities: Miami, New York, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco. We look forward to getting more and more. We saw a lot of this programming over the holidays. In addition to the House and Senate, we produced 4,790 hours on our own in 1995, with our own cameras.

Myth number three: C-SPAN is funded by your tax dollars. Big-time no. Not a penny of tax dollars go into C-SPAN. Every penny of it comes from the cable television industry, from their customers as they pay their monthly rates. Tthe industry has invested $230 million since C-SPAN began back in 1979.

I'm going to do something now that I've always wanted to do. I've never gotten a reporter who would do all this. I understand why, because it's easier to write about me, one person, as if I'm the one who started it and makes it work. That's just not even close to being true. Without all of the many different people involved over the years, this thing would never work because it does not make money for anybody. It's a non-profit company.

First of all, everything that's going on here today--everything I'm talking about--can be found on the C-SPAN Web site. You can go in there and find our bylaws and our some part of our budget, the board members who have served, and this speech. We want to make sure that people can get as much information as possible.

But there have been 170 human beings who have served on our board from the very beginning. They get nothing to serve on the board. They're all members of the cable television industry. They gave their time. They fly to wherever we're having our meetings on their nickel, not on ours. All their expenses are paid by their own companies. And they get absolutely nothing out of it except some satisfaction that they're giving something back for their country.

I'm going to name 11 individuals. Bear with me on this. I want the world to hear their names. These are the people who were my boss over the years. They're the chairmen of our board or executive committee that I answer to. They were all businesspeople, all work for their own companies. And I want everyone to hear their names out loud, because they don't get enough credit. We wouldn't be where we are if they hadn't been involved and looked back at their own industry and said to their own people, 'Do this.'

The first check came from Bob Rosencrans. He used to have a company called UA/Columbia CableVision. Bob Rosencrans gave the first check for $25,000 and was the first chairman and is still a chairman emeritus. I wish he was here today with us. But to show you how involved he is, he donated to his university, Columbia, all the "Booknotes" that we've ever recorded to put in the library there so people who wanted to study authors and writers could go to the Butler Library at Columbia as a gift from him. Because he's so involved.

John Saeman was our second chairman. John was a great strategic planner. I'll never forget going up to our office on Capitol Hill and John said, 'How many square feet you going to get here?' And I said, '3,000.' And he said, 'You're going to need more.' I said, 'John, I can't even afford 3,000. We're coming from 1,000.' He said, 'Get more.' And so I got 2,000 more square feet. And it was a big deal. I mean, a little, tiny thing to you all, but at that moment in our history that was a big deal. That was a lot of money. John--and one of the things I found with all these gentlemen over the years is that they--take you back to their colleges. They want to show off what they've done and they want to go back and talk about what we've done. And that seems to me to be the measure of how sincere they are about being involved.

Ed Allen, the greatest letter writer I've ever known, lives in Walnut Creek, California, was the third chairman. Ed wrote a stack of mail that high to everybody in the industry saying, 'This is something we need to do.' A grand gentleman, a great speechmaker.

Jack Frazee kicked everybody's tail when he came on board from Centel. Said, 'This outfit needs more money. I'm willing to stand up for more money for this organization,' and he thinks everybody else should. And Jack was a Randolph-Macon graduate and I've spent many a day down there with him talking to students.

Jim Whitson, you'd never know. Jim would never open his mouth. He's in Dallas, Texas. He runs the Sammons Corporation. They're out of the cable business now. But Jim Whitson, first and foremost, is one loyal individual. If he's going to support you, he's 100 percent. Jim Whitson believed deeply in this country, but in a public forum he would never get up and say a word. And to show you how involed he was, he called me this morning just to check in. He's not involved much anymore in the cable business. And that's, again, for me, a sign of loyalty and--dedication.

Gene Schneider. Gene Schneider did one simple thing as a chairman. He told every member of every cable system operator, put C-SPAN 1 and 2 on and leave it on, and don't touch it. And if everybody had done that in our industry in this country we'd have a lot more courage and a lot more involvement than we do. Gene Schneider, who's now in the international cable business, was involved with us for two years, and was a fabulous guy to stand by us.

Amos Hostetter. Everybody calls him the statesman in our business. He was on the Children's Television Workshop board. He stated Cable in the Classroom.. He's also on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board of directors. He lives in Boston. He just sold his company to US West. I was with him last year on his campus at Amherst, talking about C-SPAN, talking to the students, and watching him give his commitment back to that university.

John Evans lives right over here in Arlington. John was the first cable operator I ever talked to. He was a guy willing to build a microwave system from Arlington over to the capital so we could get our signal out. He spent an enormous amount of time--personal time--educating me on how business operates. John still lives in this area and is still very much involved.

Jim Gray, Kent State graduate from Dublin, Ohio. When he came on board from Warner Cable he did one simple thing: He wrote a letter to me and said that 'By the time the next two years are over, C-SPAN will be on every cable system in my jurisdiction.' No one had ever done that until that point and that was a commitment that he lived up to. He now runs PrimeStar.

Jim Robbins, about my age and a veteran of a couple tours in Vietnam, runs Cox Cable in Atlanta. Jim's just a guy who believes in the country, believes in the business world, but believes also in giving something back. The Cox Cable systems in this country are as good supporters as you can find.

And, finally, Tom Baxter. Tom is--first time I think I've experienced this--a little bit younger than I am, which is starting to get a little painful. Tom is a Holy Cross graduate. I was with him on campus in May. Tom runs Comcast Cable along with his owners, Ralph and Brian Roberts. They're totally committed to this whole project.

I just wanted to do that. I wanted you to hear their names. I want to everybody to know that there are a lot of people involved in this besides me. If it wasn't for them, this wouldn't have happened.

All right, quickly. Myth number four: cable systems have to carry C-SPAN. There is no requirement on the part of the Federal Communications Commission, on the part of the US Congress, on the part of anybody that C-SPAN has to be carried on cable systems. And quite, frankly, we've taken more hits in the last few years than anybody in the business because of legislation that passed on Capitol Hill, where they thought they were doing positive things for people. I don't think anybody did this intentionally. But you've heard the language and you don't want me to get into it because you start to glaze over.

But I've got to tell you that if you looked at it you'd be surprised at how much it hurts when you have things like: must carry, retransmission consent, commercial leased access, agreements with the Federal Trade Commission between Time Warner and the Turner folks over whether or not they have to have a competing network on these systems. We're getting hit. And in the last two or three years, we've been hit in over 9.9 million homes where there's less C-SPAN than there used to be.

And you got to ask yourself -- when you don't ask for any special favors from the government, you don't take any tax dollars, you look at the basis of the Communications Act, which says, 'Do public service, public interest convenience and necessity,' and when you're the one network that's getting hit the hardest -- if something went wrong. If this thing's going to survive, somebody's going to have to take a look at it. We don't want any special favors. Just don't make us a second-class citizen.

Myth number five: nobody watches. Well, we've just completed our four-year survey after the elections. And this is a great myth. We don't take Nielsen surveys. That's what the industry lives on, and that's fine. But we've been able to make decisions over the years without having to worry about whether or not there'll be a huge audience there. There are almost 98 million television homes in this country. Our surveys show the following: If you walk in a room and there are 10 people standing in there, six of those people will never watch C-SPAN; three will watch occasionally, they know what it is and they tune in whether it's something that's very important to them. Now one is totally involved.

So, in effect, if you translate that to numbers nationwide, it's 22 million people. Is there a newspaper alive that would like to have 22 million homes that they can get into? So for those that think it's irrelevant, stop looking at the big numbers for the big commercial networks and realize that 22 million people on a weekly and daily basis are involved, watching, judging what they see, feeding back through the phones.

Quick numbers on viewers. Around 90 percent vote. Thirty percent are Democrats, 28 percent Republicans--excuse me, 26 percent Republicans and 28 percent Independents. Ninety percent read a hometown newspaper every day. Thirty-two percent read USA Today. Ten percent of our viewers read The New York Times; 12 percent The Wall Street Journal. Thirty-seven percent read Time; 36 percent Newsweek; 20 percent US News. Fifty-five percent of our viewers are male; obviously, 45 percent female. Seventy-two percent are under 50. For those who think the audience is my age and older, 72 percent are under 50; 32 percent are under 35. Eleven percent are African-American, which has come up in the last couple of years to what national average of African-American's population. It's around 12 percent. Thirty-three percent have a high-school degree or less. Thirty-one percent have household incomes under $30,000 a year.

Myth number six: C-SPAN will always be around. We can dwell on this later. Think about it: Collier's, Life magazine, Look magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, The Washington Star, The Saturday Review of Literature. Don't ever think that anything is going to be around forever. There are no guarantees in this business. Although the industry is spending $30 million a year to make this happen at this point, look around and see what kind of money is being spent by some of the other networks.

Today we're going to announce an expansion of our Web site. This is the future in many regards for information. And our goal is to be the premiere media--multi-media Internet site in public affairs. We're going to continue to add data to our congressional coverage, but starting very soon in the next couple of weeks, we'll have live motion and audio of an event every day that is not on C-SPAN 1 and 2. So if you want to begin to see how this would work in the future, where we would be able to add to our basic television fare, you can look into the Internet every day and find a new event.

The other thing that's very exciting is we're going to archive events for you. You can go in and find on the Internet events that you might have missed, eventually with full-motion video We have a contract with an organization--I can't even reveal it because at the moment we're working through this process--that has developed full-motion video, which we're very excited about. And, as I said earlier, everything that we're talking about today is on that Web site.

And, finally, before we go to questions, I have one last myth. And that is -- and some of you have heard me do this before so it'll be very brief -- despite resemblances, I can assure you I am not John Glenn, John McCain, Johnny Carson -- and this one I've never understood -- J. Edgar Hoover.

Ms. SONJA HILLGREN (National Press Club): If you were in charge of a commercial network news operation, how would you do things differently? And what do you think of the quality of network news today?

Mr. LAMB: Well, for starters, I'm not in charge of a commercial network news organization so I don't know what I would do. They are faced with entirely different concerns than I am and we are. And you know, it's a very tough world out there and a competitive environment. And I can stand here for 15 minutes and answer this question. I say to the audience -- and they get very mad at everything, audiences are always mad -- mad at me, mad at what they see -- the beauty of today is go for the clicker. The evening news shows -- and I know they're having a tough time. Let me give you an example.

Twenty years ago, when we started -- a little less than that, 18 years ago. Twenty years ago, there were 28 million people watching the evening news shows on television at night. Twenty years later, with about 30 million more homes -- now walk through these numbers with me -- there were 28 million people any given night watching the evening news shows, the big, big shows, CBS, NBC and ABC. Twenty years later there are 30 million new homes. So it went from 70 million up to 100 million homes in the United States, roughly.

Today, if our figures are correct, there are only 23 million on average watching the evening news shows. So they lost five million homes when there was a gain of 30 million in the country. That's a great, big, huge dive on the number of people watching the evening news shows. As a matter of fact, I just looked at the numbers. Seventy-four percent of the people watching television in 1977 were watching the evening news shows, and this week it was something like 47 percent.

So that's something I don't have to worry about, except I just say to everybody, 'Stop worrying about what the others do and go for the old clicker and make up your own mind about what you want to watch.'

Ms. HILLGREN: As the years have gone by, television journalists have shortened sound bites and lengthened their own analysis. What do you think of this trend?

Mr. LAMB: Again, I don't mean to avoid these questions, but that's their business. We have given you the longest sound bites in the history of television. And it's not everybody's cup of tea. So, again, they will do what they have to do to stay in business. You've got to remember that television is a business first and foremost. We are a non-profit oasis inside a commercial business, and we're darn lucky to be there and do what we do.

Ms. HILLGREN: Should journalists accept large speaking fees?

Mr. LAMB: Jim Warren over here. Hi, Jim. How's it going? Jim's been tough on this. He writes about it all the time.

I will just say this, I don't accept any speaking fees. When I go out, if it's important enough for me to be there, it's all part of my job. I don't care what others do. That's their business. And it's a free country, boys and girls. It's a free country. Do what you want to do and stand on what you want to stand on, and you will sink or swim depending on what the public thinks.

Ms. HILLGREN: As someone who has avoided the star syndrome and personal publicity, why did you agree to a book about C-SPAN?

Mr. LAMB: I really didn't agree to a book about C-SPAN. Steve Frantzich were are you? Steve Frantzich at the Naval Academy and John Sullivan at the University of Virginia have for several years taught at our professor's seminar. They wanted to write a book. And we didn't change a thing I don't think, did we, Steve? We just let them have full run of the place. It's tough. I don't even like to read about myself. Sorry, Steve. But everybody who has read this book in detail gives it high marks for being an honest, straightforward book that has the details on how we started and where we came from.

You know, it's a very tough thing to do when somebody wants to write about you. You have one of two choices. If somebody says, 'I want to do an article on you,' you can either agree to talk to them or not. If you say you're not going to talk to them, you take big chances. If you say you are going to talk to them, you take big chances. So I try to be as open as possible and talk to them. And in the middle of that, you get these mixed messages, unfortunately.

Ms. HILLGREN: What is your opinion of the political knowledge of most Americans?