Leadership: Brian Lamb and C-SPAN
Program Information
Series: A Moment in TimeDuration: 00:03:40
Year Produced: 2009
Description:
Some of the most effective leadership is hidden. Consider the influence of one of the most "invisible" visible men in early 21st century America: the founder of C-SPAN, Brian Lamb.
A Moment in Time is a brief, exciting and compelling journey into the past. Created to excite and enlighten the public about the past, its relevance to the present and its impact on the future, A Moment In Time is a captivating historical narrative that is currently broadcast worldwide.
For more information visit: http://amomentintime.comTranscript
Lead: Some of the most effective leadership is hidden. Consider the influence of one of the most "invisible" visible men in early 21st century America: the founder of C-SPAN, Brian Lamb.
Intro: A Moment In Time with Dan Roberts.
Content: He was not the best history student at Purdue University, but after graduation and a stint in the U.S. Navy, Brian Lamb embarked on a career that would bring a heightened interest to that discipline, politics, and to national affairs in general. In 1977, with his business partners he founded C-SPAN, Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network. It went on the air in 1979. At that time three major broadcast networks dominated the airways and provided programming for the vast majority of listeners. Cable television, which was then in its corporate infancy, was seeking programming alternatives that would give it an edge in the coming struggle with broadcast television.
Lamb proposed and then delivered channels that would provide unfiltered policy discussions to the viewing audience so it could make informed decisions. There followed a steadily increasing schedule of events, think tank discussions, debates on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, caucuses from the Iowa presidential campaign, endless press conferences, committee hearings, and Lamb's own popular Sunday night interview program, "Booknotes." With his self-effacing manner and understated style of interviewing, Lamb allows the author to tell his or her story to the benefit of the audience and the author alike. This is neither shout journalism nor the venue of the ego-driven celebrity host. His quiet, silent leadership provides through C-SPAN a source of sometimes passionate, sometimes biased, occasionally partisan, but always useful contributions to the national conversation.
This program is part of a continuing series recognizing the tenth anniversary of the Jepson School of Leadership at the University of Richmond. I'm Dan Roberts.