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C-SPAN Faces A Funding Crisis Amid Cord Cutting, Even As D.C.’s Drama Makes Its Mission Ever More Important
C-SPAN, launched in 1979, finds itself in a pending crisis. Funded by the cable industry, it has seen its revenue fall as consumers cut the cord.
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. 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 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.
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