C Span

If you want to catch TV's most captivating series this summer, don't look to HBO. Don't look to MTV. Look to C-SPAN.The weekly "American Presidents: Life Portraits," three-hour treatments of each of the nation's 41 chief executives, may be television's most ambitious documentary project ever.But aside from its obvious value to history buffs, what makes "American Presidents" so compelling are the unexpected, often contentious debates that take place between the program's featured historians and its viewers who call in and offer very different takes on the American presidents.

Having just observed dozens of my fellow citizens standing in line for more than an hour to vote, I started to feel good about the country again. Some 430,000 Marylanders took advantage of five days of early voting this year, so many that Sandy Rosenberg, the veteran state delegate from Baltimore, says he'll be filing a bill in the next legislative session to expand the opportunities for early voting. I drove away from the polls thinking: Well, we've been through an ugly, money-soaked political season, but people still embrace and respect the process.

THE CURRENT, superheated debate on TV violence that now has networks agreeing to add parental advisories at the beginning of potentially offensive programming may be a mere tempest in a teapot.For instance, what about cartoons? Why won't violent cartoons also require a warning to parents? What about jeans commercials? And so on.Well, the short answer to these problems is that children, if "trained" early, won't be drawn to violent TV programs of any sort. And when this early training "takes," they'll be among the best informed and most civicly active folks in the republic.

Forget the broadcast networks of ABC, NBC and CBS. And forget PBS, too, unless you are part of the minority that doesn't have cable or online access. Public television simply doesn't have the resources any longer to do any kind of original, first-rate coverage of hardly anything -- even a pre-planned event like a national convention. If you want to use TV to get the best information and to engage as fully as possible with the Republican convention that begins Monday in Tampa and the Democratic convention next month in Charlotte, go with cable.

It was a race for Illinois' seat in the U.S. Senate. And as with most elections, the debates that took place on the campaign trail were political theater at its finest.The contenders were Abraham Lincoln and Sen. Stephen A. Douglas. And for three months in 1858, Lincoln, a lawyer and ex-congressman, faced off in a series of seven debates with Douglas, the incumbent Democrat.Lincoln had hoped to unseat Douglas, and thousands of people showed up for the U.S. Senate debates. And though Lincoln lost that election, the debates, which focused on state's rights and slavery, earned him national renown.

THE REAL miracle of television is C-Span. I lie abed at a roadside inn in Grantville, Pa., and C-Span takes me back to youth. Or whatever that fizzy condition was back there in the mists of faraway 1962.It is the spectacle of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy debating one Mitt Romney in Boston that does the trick, but there would be nospectacle here by the Pennsylvania high road if it were not for C-Span.Mightier television powers, treating this spectacle as a parochial Massachusetts exercise, decline to interrupt their nightly flow of electronic slush by showing it.Only C-Span spreads it out across the darkening continent.

Cable channel C-SPAN will air a live "Election '92 High School Forum" at 4 p.m. today from Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville.Besides being featured on C-SPAN, the Maryland high school forum will be telecast to 14,000 schools across the country. C-SPAN's Brian Lamb will moderate and Baltimore Sun columnist Roger Simon will be a guest.

C-Span, the television channel lawmakers love the most, has become an unintended victim of the cable law passed by Congress two years ago to increase competition and lower rates.In the nine months since key provisions of the law took effect, C-Span and its sister channel, C-Span 2, have been cut back on cable systems serving more than 4 million households, and in some cases dropped altogether. In some instances, the cuts have prompted protests from viewers accustomed to watching the antics of the federal government live and unedited.

In what must be the most unintended of consequences, Congress has passed a law that is cutting television contact between many members and their constituents.In the 15 months since new federal cable regulations went into effect, C-SPAN's live coverage of Congress has been cut off or cut back by cable companies in 95 cities.Viewers in 4 million households across the country have been affected, including cable subscribers in Atlanta, Miami and Austin, Texas, said Brian Lamb, C-SPAN's founder and chief executive officer.

WASHINGTON -- It is the Paul E. Tsongas of television channels, so defiantly anti-chic it is almost chic, so acutely non-hip it is nearly hip.With no glitz, no polish and no commercial breaks, C-SPAN, cable television's wondrously droning and ubiquitous unchannel, wallows in being everything network television is not.As the Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network covers its fourth presidential campaign -- bringing to 55 million cable households every whimper...

Outside of CNN's performance on the night of Iowa caucuses, no one's election-related TV coverage excited me as much as that provided by Politico last week on Super Tuesday. I heard and saw it on C-SPAN radio and TV. Politico had been streaming such coverage, but Super Tuesday was the first time it was carried nationally by C-SPAN. The good news, Politico will be back on C-SPAN tonight with Campaign 2012 coverage starting at 7 p.m. Politico's HD livestream coverage starts at 6:30.

There is no lush adaptation of Charles Dickens, no first- or even second-rate thrillers this weekend. But there is a holiday treat for the family, and the unlikely TV Santa is C-SPAN. Sunday night, the channel kicks off a "White House Week" with a two-hour documentary about 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Six nights follow with one-hour programs on various aspects of the site. Only a rough cut of Sunday's film was available for preview, but it's enough to see that the film is a winner. The starring role belongs to the long, slow shots of the rooms most Americans have only heard about.

Don't fight it. On the last weekend before one of the most important elections in American history, go with the political flow when it comes to TV viewing. SORTING OUT THE WEEK For an end-of-the-week analysis of all things political, no talk show does it better than Inside Washington. Host Gordon Peterson keeps the program moving at a brisk pace from topic to topic, but he is willing to stop things dead in their tracks to let the panel and viewers savor an especially tasty insight or remark (8 p.m., MPT-Channels 22 and 67)

C-SPAN to bring Campaign 2008 bus to county C-SPAN will bring its Campaign 2008 bus to the county tomorrow as part of its "Road to the White House" tour. The red, white and blue bus will visit the Cockeysville library, 9833 Greenside Drive, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., and Towson University, 8000 York Road, from noon to 2 p.m. The 45-foot-long mobile production studio is used in C-SPAN's political coverage and in educational programs for teachers and students. In Baltimore County, C-SPAN is on Comcast cable Channel 16; C-SPAN2 is on Channel 17 or 104; and C-SPAN 3 is on Channel 105. Information: 202-309-3358.

Annapolis teacher attends national C-SPAN event An Annapolis teacher is one of 25 educators from across the nation who attended a C-SPAN Classroom Campaign 2008 Educators' Conference in Washington last week. Laura Pinto, an eighth-grade U.S. history and government teacher at Wiley H. Bates Middle School, got a chance to hear how other teachers incorporate the round-the-clock news and government cable station into their teaching. The conference also helped participants to develop strategies for teaching about the coming election.

WASHINGTON -- Fans of the C-SPAN cable channels are protesting Comcast's decision to pre-empt U.S. Senate broadcasts, Book TV and other shows in favor of Orioles or Washington Nationals baseball games. A dedicated viewer of C-SPAN2 sat down a week ago to watch Book TV, and quicker than a major league fastball, the program was gone from the public affairs channel. "All of a sudden a baseball game was on instead," the outraged viewer wrote to C-SPAN. "I was furious." Comcast says it provided notice before it began bumping some C-SPAN2 shows last week because the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN)

For more than an hour, Travis and Jordan Swonger played with about $250,000 worth of camera, computer and audio equipment in the 45-foot bright yellow bus, parked in the grass next to the Jones Intercable Studios in Gambrills Friday."

SAN FRANCISCO -- Jerry Springer for Senate? Why not? Ohio elected a senator who was farther out in space than Springer.Think how C-SPAN's ratings would soar.Think how entertaining impeachment trials could be, especially if senators could be given lighter chairs, ones they could throw.Think how enlightened the Senate could become on issues such as male lesbians, cross-dressing nudists and bosses who cheat on their wives with young employees while conducting foreign affairs on the phone.Oh, that's right.

Before the members of the House of Representatives had even begun their three days' worth of soliloquies on Iraq, President Bush declared that he didn't plan to pay attention. That's his right, no doubt, and it's certainly not unprecedented. There's plenty that he's chosen not to pay attention to since he moved into the Oval Office - as the perjury trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, in its own peculiar way, helps to illustrate, because it gets back to the way the White House reacted to evidence that there might not be weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

AC-SPAN bus pulled into Annapolis High School on Wednesday, an all-in-one rolling classroom and advertisement for the cable TV network. A day after Election Day, about 120 students in government, journalism, speech, debate, and related classes took turns boarding the bus for a lesson on civics and government - and how the network can help children learn more about them. C-SPAN, created as a public service, is known for its gavel-to-gavel coverage of Congress. One 45-foot-long C-SPAN bus is equipped with cameras, TV monitors and other production equipment and focuses on schools; the other bus goes to libraries, bookstores and other book-related venues.