Brian Lamb helped found C-SPAN—the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network—and has served as the company’s chief executive officer since its beginning in 1979. Today, more than 86 million households can tune in C-SPAN’s flagship television network.

The concept of a public affairs network that provides in-depth coverage of national and international issues was a natural for Mr. Lamb, who has been both a journalist and a political press secretary. Interested in broadcasting from childhood, he worked at Indiana radio and TV stations while attending high school and college, spinning records, selling ads, and eventually hosting the locally popular "Dance Date" television program.

After graduation from Purdue University, Mr. Lamb joined the Navy; his tour included White House duty in the Johnson administration and a stint in the Pentagon public affairs office during the Vietnam War. In 1967, he went home to Lafayette, Indiana. Washington beckoned, however, and he soon returned to the nation’s capital. There, he worked as a freelance reporter for UPI Audio, a Senate press secretary and a White House telecommunications policy staffer.

In 1974, Brian Lamb began publishing a biweekly newsletter called The Media Report. He also covered communications issues as Washington bureau chief for Cablevision magazine. It was from this vantage point that the idea of a public affairs network delivered by satellite began to take shape.

By 1977, Mr. Lamb had won the support of key cable industry executives for a channel that could deliver gavel-to-gavel coverage of the U.S. Congress. Organizing C-SPAN as a not-for-profit company, the group built one of D.C.’s first satellite uplinks—just in time to deliver the first televised session of the U.S. House of Representatives to 3.5 million cable households on March 19, 1979.

With cable industry support, C-SPAN grew rapidly and today employs 275 people and offers three 24-hour television networks, C-SPAN, C-SPAN2, and C-SPAN3:
C-SPAN: The flagship network provides gavel-to-gavel coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives.
C-SPAN also offers coverage of daily political events from Washington, including congressional hearings, White House briefings, news conferences, policy seminars, and more.

C-SPAN2: Created in 1986 to cover U.S. Senate proceedings. On weekends, C-SPAN2 features Book TV, 48 hours of non-fiction book programming, 8 am Saturdays though 8 am Mondays.
C-SPAN3: launched on a twenty-four hour basis in January, 2001 and available to systems offering digital cable packages.

C-SPAN also programs WCSP, an FM radio station which serves the Washington/Baltimore area and nationally on satellite radio. C-SPAN also has an extensive presence on the internet that can be accessed at www.c-span.org.
A regular on-air presence for C-SPAN, Brian Lamb has also hosted Booknotes since the program’s inception in 1989, taping more than six hundred nonfiction author interviews. He has also published three books based on the series. He lives in Arlington, Virginia.