Over the past week, C-SPAN has covered the narrow, early morning vote on Donald Trump‘s ‘big beautiful bill.” It carried in full the president’s at-times bizarre Oval Office clash with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. It captured the heated exchange between Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Sen. Patti Murray (D-WA).
At times the source of humor for its offering of comprehensive coverage of extremely wonkish TV in an era of ever-short attention spans, C-SPAN has nevertheless been a go-to destination for the unedited moments in D.C. at an unprecedented era of hyper-partisanship, high anxiety and heavy drama.
The irony is that the network, launched in 1979, finds itself at a crossroads. Funded by the cable industry, it has seen its revenue fall as consumers cut the cord, while the most popular streaming alternatives have yet to carry the C-SPAN channels to make up for the loss.
Sam Feist, who became the new CEO of C-SPAN last year, said that the result is a “crisis of funding,” as virtual multichannel distributors like YouTube TV and Hulu have so far declined to add the channels to their lineups.
“That adds up to many millions of dollars of revenue for this non profit,” Feist said. “We don’t get government funding. We’re completely dependent on those revenues. So it’s a crisis for us, and it’s unsustainable over time, and more importantly, as people switch from cable to YouTube TV because it might be a slightly less expensive service, they’re no longer able to see their government unfiltered the way only C-SPAN provides it.”
Feist said that the cost to distributors, 7.25 cents per subscriber per month, “may be tiny and almost insignificant to an individual household, it is what pays to keep the lights on and the cameras covering Washington here at C-SPAN.”
C-SPAN carried the marathon House Rules Committee hearing — totaling more than 21 hours — for Donald Trump’s signature “big beautiful bill,” tax and spending legislation.
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According to its IRS filing, C-SPAN’s total revenue declined to $46.3 million in the year ended on March 31, 2024, from $49.4 million a year earlier. That figure reflects a drop in programming fees, its largest revenue stream.
YouTube TV, the largest of the virtual MVPDs with estimates of 8 million to 10 million subscribers, has cited direct and indirect costs to their business, which may be passed on to subscribers.
A YouTube TV spokesperson said, “Unfortunately, our subscribers have not shown sufficient interest in adding C-SPAN to the YouTube TV lineup to justify the increased cost to subscribers’ monthly bills.”
The streamer said that it has proposed access to their prime time channels lineup, where users could directly pay for a subscription, and YouTube TV subscribers then could add the C-SPAN channels for a fee. The spokesperson also noted that a large amount of content was available on YouTube’s main platform, and generated advertising revenue for C-SPAN.
Yet that hasn’t come close to making up for lost revenue. According to the IRS filing, C-SPAN’s advertising returns, including short spots airing before online programming, are a fraction of programming fees, at $334,412 in the 2024 fiscal year. C-SPAN also has been taking donations, but that funding source also is small compared to the carriage fees.
A Hulu spokesperson did not return a request for comment.
Feist said that they have explored a paywall on the C-SPAN website, which does not carry all of the programming of the linear networks, but “what we think are the most important things.”
“That’s certainly not the solution to our funding problem, and our current situation is not sustainable. When 15 to 20 million people that had C-SPAN switched to a different service and no longer do, that is not sustainable,” Feist said.
Founded by Brian Lamb, C-SPAN was started in 1979, with coverage of the House of Representatives. It later expanded to another channel covering the Senate, and later added a third channel covering public affairs programming.
C-SPAN was allowed greater access to cover the House Speaker vote in January, 2023, including this confrontational moment between Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Kevin McCarthy.
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With its funding from the cable industry, C-SPAN also has served as a way for individual operators to show local communities their commitment to public service programming. Through the years, as multichannel viewing expanded to satellite and fiber, services like DirecTV and Fios also carried the networks.
C-SPAN’s areas of coverage now extend beyond Capitol Hill to the White House, the campaign trail, and even to live and consequential events like the recent papal conclave. C-SPAN has long sought televised coverage of the Supreme Court, and a breakthrough of sorts was seen during the pandemic, when the justices allowed live audio feeds of oral arguments.
This fall will bring a high-profile addition to its programming lineup, in keeping with the network’s mandate to remain neutral in the partisan fray. CeaseFire will feature lawmakers and other politicos of opposite parties seeking areas of agreement, rather than contentious argument.
The show is Feist’s idea, having joined C-SPAN after almost 35 years at CNN, including 13 years as senior vice president and Washington bureau chief. He also once oversaw CNN’s Crossfire, which helped popularize the panel format but may be the opposite of what CeaseFire is trying to achieve.
Crossfire, Feist said, “was an important program that really helped you understand where Republicans were coming from, where Democrats were coming from. It was a raucous debate show. People enjoyed it. People watched it. It was frequently the most popular program on CNN in its heyday. But it wasn’t a program that really led to common ground or compromise. And in America now, we’re living through one of the most polarized periods at least in modern history. There seems to not be a lot of effort to seek common ground, at least in the media, or seek compromise.”
Feist said that he’s spoken to more than 100 members of Congress, including the question “who’s your best friend on the other side?”
“In almost every case, the member of Congress I was talking to gave me a name,” Feist said. When told about plans for the show, “every single one of them said yes.”
“Now whether they’ll actually come on or not, that is still to be determined. Maybe someone’s staffer will think they’d rather have purity than compromise,” he said. “But I don’t think we’ll have trouble finding people.”
That said, Feist made clear that his “number one mission right now is to help increase our distribution. It’s actually to restore our distribution.”
Some of the stars of C-SPAN — members of Congress — have put on the pressure.
Last week, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Mike Flood (R-NE) wrote recently in Newsweek that C-SPAN’s 7.25 cents per month fee is well below those of commercial news channels, including Fox News, at $2.50 per subscriber, and CNN, at $1.30. They wrote that it was even more essential to secure carriage on major streamers as younger audiences abandon linear TV.
They wrote, “While carrying C-SPAN may not dramatically grow YouTubeTV or Hulu’s subscriber numbers, it provides viewers with an essential resource for understanding what their government is doing—letting them see for themselves what is going on in Washington. We recognize that this is a public service, but it’s one that’s an investment in our people and the future of America.”
C-SPAN also may be one of the few outlets not in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump, who has recently talked of watching the channel, even at 3 a.m. in the morning.
The network also has boosted its social media presence, including promising signs on TikTok, where C-SPAN has 2.6 million followers. According to figures from Tubular Labs and Fabric Media, C-SPAN is beating major news brands in TikTok views per video and in engagement. In the 12 months through April, C-SPAN’s posts drew 710 million views, 1,184 uploads and 36.7 million engagements, outpacing The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Business.
C-SPAN has plans to add three more staffers this month to its social media team, Feist said.
“We’re not trying to gain clicks with flamboyant headlines and language that you might normally see on social media,” Feist said. “We’re just putting it out there for the users to find, but we’re definitely putting more content out there.”
The core content from C-SPAN, though, will remain live and unfiltered events, something that may be more relevant now more than ever. Feist points to Ipsos polling showing a balance of viewership across political ideology.
“We’re in a fascinating political environment,” he said. “We have a very closely divided Congress. We have a president who is active and encourages the television cameras to come in to witness what he’s doing, not just him, but the work of his administration, which then leads to Democrats hosting event after event in response to the president. And we’re in a position to bring all of that live to the public.”
