C-SPAN Gets Real Madison Style

Ever since Survivor! got busy voting one another off the island (or in from the Outback) in a voyeuristic experiment in self-government, the staff at C-SPAN should be feeling pretty self-satisfied about the new reality TV trend. Talk about getting real. C-SPAN's reality doesn't even have an off switch.

"MTV does a great job at what it does," says C-SPAN field producer Joe Teeples ('87). "But The Real World, is that real? Would you have these groupings [of people living together] normally? ... After editing down six months to eight hours, is that the real world? If you think about reality TV, none of it is reality. It's created."

In sharp contrast, Teeples can point to C-SPAN's three cable networks and 23 years of around-the-clock coverage of the everyday drama and tedium of American public life.

"We have the fly-on-the-wall approach. We tape from start to finish," says Paul Brown ('83), who helps develop and schedule C-SPAN's programming. "When the House is in session, C-SPAN 1 is airing it. When the Senate's in session, C-SPAN 2 is airing it," Brown says. "C-SPAN 3 airs live events like hearings and press briefings and history programming."

Brown and Teeples are among the JMU alumni who deliver C-SPAN's commercial- and pundit-free public affairs programming, including the popular viewer call-in show, Washington Journal, which studio production manager Brett Betsill ('82) has helped direct for years.

As camera operators, studio and field technicians, crew supervisors, directors, producers and managers, C-SPAN's JMU alumni televise live hearings, votes and caucus meetings, White House press briefings, National Press Club gatherings, and interviews with reporters, literati and other D.C. players.

Some graduates, like Teeples and Meg Galperin ('97), hit America's roads in the C-SPAN School Bus (actually a mobile TV studio and production facility). They visit public schools and also produce original programming, much of it historical. Alumni went on the road to help create the Peabody Award-winning American Presidents: Life Portraits series and the current American Writers: A Journey Through History.

While Robin Porter ('00) puts the programs on the air from the master control room, Debbie Richerson Bates ('93) hires remote crews and arranges live feeds for political and historical events across the country, including grassroots affairs, town hall meetings and campaign rallies, where the American people air their thoughts and concerns.

The courts, American history, education and books get special attention from C-SPAN, which dispatches crews to think tanks and universities to cover lectures, panel discussions and seminars, including the March 2001 JMU celebration of James Madison's 250th birthday.

All of these efforts aim C-SPAN's cameras at the checks, balances and branches of government, the press, and the American people.

"I think that the more you study history, the more you understand how and why things happen the way they do today," says Carol Hellwig, who is executive assistant to C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb. She has helped write many of Lamb's books and wrote, Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb?, the companion book to the American Presidents series. "So C-SPAN's interest in history complements our public affairs mission perfectly in that regard -- it places current events in context."

Over the years, as many as 20 JMU alumni have helped C-SPAN eke out a special cable niche, only recently getting some periodic company from the likes of FOX, MSNBC and CNN. These alumni will be among the first to admit, however, that C-SPAN isn't winning the Nielsen sweeps. In fact, it's not running the ratings race since cable companies finance C-SPAN on a per-subscriber basis. Because they're not competing for viewers with Temptation Island or Friends or Dateline NBC or even the evening news, C-SPAN can afford to be, well, less sexy.

"It's an acquired taste," Teeples acknowledges. "People who understand the ins and outs of politics in general are fascinated by C-SPAN. People who don't [enjoy politics] find it boring. It's the same as golf on TV. We have our niche. Some people occasionally watch to find out stuff. Some, including the legislators and staff on Capitol Hill, are self-proclaimed junkies. Some will never watch us, and that's fine. We sort of view ourselves as the public library: We're there when you want us."

Hellwig agrees. "C-SPAN's style is not for everyone. We realize that," she says. "Our programming may not be the most exciting, but I think it's important to have a place where people can see political events unfold without someone else's editing or interpretation. The nature of commercial television doesn't allow those networks to spend more than a few minutes on each story. C-SPAN can devote hours. If someone wants to study the issues in depth, they have that option."

JMU media arts and design professor Kevin Reynolds looks to an old master for insight. "Alfred Hitchcock said that film is really life with the boring parts left out.
C-SPAN leaves all the boring parts in," says Reynolds, who teaches society and the media. "You have to pull out the kernels of conflict yourself. C-SPAN is the antithesis [of reality TV] in some ways. It's reality on a mundane level," he explains. "It's interesting intermittently, boring more often than not. It is more minutiae than the public cares about. But the public feels comfortable that we do have this window on the process."

And public access is the whole point, Teeples explains. "C-SPAN was created to show government in action, to give a hands-on view of what's going on in our government."

Meg Galperin ('97), who recently left C-SPAN to join AmeriCorps, says "C-SPAN brings Washington, D.C., outside of the beltway. Before C-SPAN started in 1979, if anyone wanted to see the House or the Senate, they actually had to go to Washington and stand in line for four hours to see 10 minutes. How much do you actually see? You voted for them [elected officials] to go there. Your tax dollars pay their salaries. They're deciding how to use the rest of your tax dollars. Are they living up to their campaigning? Are they doing what you elected them to do?" she asks. "Sanford, N.C., where I am now with AmeriCorps, is so far removed from Washington, DC It will be efforts like C-SPAN that bring knowledge of government here."

C-SPAN, like the American life it mirrors, does have its drama, however. Just in the last three years, Betsill says, there were the Clinton impeachment hearings, the presidential campaign, the vote count controversy and Sept. 11. C-SPAN showed it all. "Now it's the Enron hearings," he said just before press time. "There's always something going on that's enlivening public policy, and that's what C-SPAN is all about."

But whether dramatic or boring, says Bates, "there's no bias, no commentary, no commercials. We don't get up and say, 'this is what we think about what Barbara Boxer just said.' Sometimes we get shoved aside by sponsoring groups because we're not a major network. Others favor us more because the event is shown from beginning to end. It's not just a sound bite," Bates explains. "Our premise is for the viewer to decide what it means. We show the whole thing with no reporters. That way there's no bias."

"We allow viewers to make up their own opinions," Brown says. "One reason why I look forward to viewer comments demonstrates how people view things so differently. It's hard to believe they're watching the same event."

Like Brown, Betsill finds the proof of C-SPAN's neutrality in those viewer comments. "We're questioned daily on our balance of the guests we have on Washington Journal. Conservative guests put up with liberals calling and bashing; and then during the Clinton years, we had the same problem from the other side. So we split up the phone lines [offering one each for Democrats, Republicans and others] so they must identify themselves [and we can balance the access according to how we answer the phones]. Now we get bashed from both sides, and that's actually what you want to hear."

Brown says, "That goes to the heart of why C-SPAN exists in the first place, to show the political process in a way that will allow viewers unfiltered access to what's going on. Networks and local news have just so much time. For a five-hour hearing on Enron, a local newscast can devote a minute and a half. In those cases you're being asked to accept what a producer or a reporter thinks is the most important information to take out of that meeting."

"It's up to others to make up their own opinions," Teeples says. "We're not here to make commentary or to stir the pot. Viewers have to think and use their minds and not just let TV wash over them. There's a time and place for entertainment, and this might seem boring. But we don't spoon-feed anybody."

So, is that reality?

Galperin wonders. She is mindful that C-SPAN gets criticism when the camera zooms out from those congressional speechmakers to reveal an empty chamber. "But," she explains, "there's a TV in every office in the Capitol Building, so they're not talking to an empty room. The TV is always on, and congressmen and their staff can do paperwork and keep an eye on the floor."

Betsill, who celebrates his 20th anniversary at C-SPAN this year, sounds like the old hand he is: "When you talk about Washington and politics and talk about what's real and what's not, it's always a challenge to figure out. It has gone on for 200 years."

Part of C-SPAN's mission is helping school children learn about television and the reality of Washington and government. Students can literally watch as a bill becomes law, when teachers incorporate C-SPAN programs into their lessons. That also happens through the C-SPAN School Bus, the mobile production and studio facility that turns into an instant classroom. "That's one of our more important projects," Teeples says. "Understanding the way TV is presented, learning the grammar of TV really makes for better-informed viewers."

Which doesn't mean that reality television will be any less popular.

"We all have our mundane day-to-day lives that we live with family and partners," says Reynolds, the JMU media professor. "The reason soap operas have proliferated for so long is that these are vicarious experiences. Reality TV took that whole model a step further. These characters are really pushing the boundaries of possibility. There's something about the voyeur in each of us who wants to peek into other people's lives, even though we know in our hearts it's not reality."

C-SPAN's particular mirror of Americana in action, meanwhile, will continue observant and unadorned.

"C-SPAN is not better," Teeples says, "it's just different."