No Glitz, No Glamour

By NANCY TRAVER WASHINGTON

At the Washington headquarters of the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, better known as C-SPAN, it is 3 p.m. -- time for the daily news meeting. The network's editors are preparing for their version of the Olympics: gavel-to- gavel coverage of this week's Republican Convention. As they pore over the programming possibilities, senior producer Sarah Trahern reaches for her pencil and enthusiastically underlines one passage: a 90-minute call-in show on George Bush's regulatory policy. Eyes light up. Heads nod in agreement.

While the major networks will air only snippets of speeches and endless pontification by commentators, C-SPAN will offer blanket coverage of the G.O.P. convention to 57 million cable households. As channel grazers zap around the dial, they will find ABC, NBC and CBS dominated by sweeping shots of the Astrodome, swirling graphics and fast-paced music. Then they will hit the no-frills look of C-SPAN, whose idea of a visual is a newspaper headline held aloft and whose coverage will focus mainly on the convention speakers, head on and close up.

"Everybody gets to see everything from start to finish," says Brian Lamb, C-Span's founder, chairman and frequent host. "We've cut out the middlemen so that people can get the facts, then make up their own minds." With a convention budget of only $300,000 -- the Big Three are expected to spend many times that -- One of C-Span's mandates is to show democracy at work, which means that viewers are sometimes treated to programming that is about as interesting as watching bonsai grow. Much of what C-SPAN telecasts during the year consists of hearings on the federal budget or telecommunications policy. On the other hand, when a subject is hot (last week's MIA hearings starring Ross Perot) or when no other network is paying much attention (the early days of this year's primary season), then the viewer knows no one is going to cover the event as thoroughly as C-SPAN.

Overseeing the network is the mild-mannered Lamb, a native of Indiana who % came to Washington in 1966 and held a series of staff jobs in Congress, the Johnson Administration and the Pentagon. It was his resentment of the slick TV news packagers that spawned the idea for a no-nonsense, just-the-facts network. While working as Washington bureau chief for a trade journal called Cablevision in 1977, he went before a group of cable-industry executives and made a pitch for a nonprofit channel that would cover Congress. Within two years, C-SPAN was on the air with a budget of $400,000 and four employees. The station operated out of one room of an apartment house in Virginia. "Things were so tight around here that when you needed an extension cord, you brought one from home," recalls C-SPAN vice president Brian Lockman.

The network grew gradually, adding a second channel to cover the Senate in 1986, and moved into a comfortable suite of offices with a view of the Capitol. C-SPAN's current $18 million budget is funded by the cable companies that offer it as part of their package. Lamb proudly points out that the station runs no commercials, receives no federal or state subsidies and has no corporate underwriters.

Lamb leads an ascetic life-style, sharing a townhouse in Arlington, Virginia, with his girlfriend Holly Hassett, a lobbyist for Hershey Foods. He's in bed by 9:30 and rises around 4:45 a.m. to begin plowing through the nine newspapers he reads every day. His Buddha-like serenity gives way to anger only when he speaks of the "television tyranny" of East Coast elites. Lamb decided when he first came to Washington that he didn't want someone like Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley shaping information for him.

Though C-SPAN does not use a rating service, and never knows for sure how many people are watching, Lamb receives hundreds of letters a week (Ronald Reagan and Frank Zappa are fans), and viewers jam the phone lines on the call- in shows. "This election, people want to ask their own questions and not have a bunch of talking heads making decisions for them," says Lamb. Those who disagree with Lamb know where to reach him -- as long as they don't mind talking on the air.