C-Span founder Brian Lamb begins the interview with me by saying that he once planned to visit every place in West Virginia named for the late U.S. Senator Robert Byrd.
“My wife and I were really going to do that… it would be a kick,” said Lamb, who is not being the least bit sarcastic.
Lamb, 70, will soon have some time to make that trip, if he still wants too. He announced Monday that he’s stepping down April 1 from his position as CEO, though he will continue hosting “Q&A,” his Sunday interview program.
The Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-Span) was Lamb’s idea back in the 1970’s. He convinced cable operators to buy in. Today, C-Span provides wall-to-wall television coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate and key committee hearings to more than 86 million households.
Lamb’s career began in his hometown of Lafayette, Indiana when he walked into the local radio station and said he wanted to learn to cue up records. The station later hired him part-time.
In college at Purdue, he created a TV show called “Dance Date,” modeled after American Bandstand, though much more modest. Lamb told me he built the set, sold the advertising, played the records and even recruited the dancers.
Lamb landed in Washington, D.C. after joining the Navy. He worked in public affairs for the Pentagon. Later, he became a freelance reporter. In 1974, he began publishing a bi-weekly newsletter called The Media Report and covered Washington for Cablevision magazine, which spawned his idea for C-Span.
Over the years, C-Span has broadened its coverage to include other programming, including Booknotes. Lamb hosted the show and has interviewed more than 600 nonfiction authors, always preparing by first reading the entire book.
Naturally, there have been a few bloopers. He once asked British historian Sir Martin Gilbert what “buggery” was. “He just dropped his jaw,” says Lamb, confessing that he had read the word in Gilbert’s book about Winston Churchill, but didn’t know what it meant.
And that’s where many of Lamb’s questions have come from. He says he approaches interviews as though he were “asking questions for the average person.”
As driving force and lead anchor for C-Span for 35 years, Lamb has become recognized as an iconic media figure. National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg calls Lamb, “One of the most consequential and decent Americans in the last half century.”
Still, his unfailing objectivity and Spartan questioning style mean he’s still somewhat of an enigma to America. What are Brian Lamb’s politics?
“The only thing I care about, have ever cared about, is how our money is spent,” Lamb told me when asked about his political leanings. “We’re in terrible trouble and we keep fooling ourselves. Both sides do the same thing… both sides have way, way overspent and something’s got to give.”
Lamb says he has yet to make any specific retirement plans, but he does want to spend more time with his wife, Victoria. The two have known each other since grade school, but were married just seven years ago—she after a divorce and he for the first time.
“I don’t have one of those bucket lists,” Lamb said on Metronews Talkline Thursday. “We’re not in a hurry to do anything.”
After three-and-a-half decades of shaping one of the most significant media outlets in America, Brian Lamb has earned some down time.