PRINCETON: Civics bus offers C-SPAN lessons

By Greg Forester, Staff Writer
   Local residents and other visitors had an opportunity to learn about the nation’s oldest cable news network Friday when C-SPAN’s Civics Bus spent two hours on Witherspoon Street in front of the Princeton Public Library for the local leg of the network’s “100 Days, 100 Schools” tour.
   Although a visit during what was spring break week for many local children meant there weren’t many students around, the Civics Bus’ Princeton stopover did provide curious pedestrians with an in-depth look at C-SPAN, which provides 24-hour coverage of Congress and a variety of other public service programming.
   Standing in front of an array of monitors known as the Quad Box, C-SPAN education coordinator Adrienne Hoar demonstrated how C-SPAN is different from other cable news networks like FOX News or CNN.
   With the click of a remote control, she replayed C-SPAN coverage of the Dec. 13, 2003 capture of Saddam Hussein in the Iraqi town of ad-Dawr, side-by-side with coverage from other major networks.
   Ms. Hoar pointed out C-SPAN’s simpler visual format and said that without a need for advertising revenue C-SPAN is able to produce longer pieces and provide more in-depth coverage of national and world events than other networks.
   ”It’s a different kind of coverage,” Ms. Hoar said.
   Buses like the one that visited Princeton on Friday spend 11 months every year traveling around America, fulfilling a C-SPAN mission of taking the network’s services outside of the nation’s capital.
   ”Our purpose is to get outside of the (Washington) D.C. bubble,” Ms. Hoar said.
   The buses serve not only as information centers for the public but also as full-service production studios.
   The production studio allows the network to broadcast from events across the nation, like Los Angeles, where another Civics Bus is preparing for the kickoff of the Los Angeles Times Book Festival next weekend.
   The network, which broadcasts weekend book programming, will broadcast interviews with authors during the festival.
   ”It’s a production studio on wheels,” Ms. Hoar said.
   The network, which recently celebrated its 30-year anniversary, is America’s longest-running cable news channel.
   American cable companies founded C-SPAN as a public service March 19, 1979. Their creation now serves over 95 million U.S. households.
   The network originally aired coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives, and eventually expanded to coverage of the U.S. Senate.
   Instead of advertising C-SPAN relies on a 5-cent contribution from each cable bill, which allows the network to broadcast its three public affairs television channels, C-SPAN Radio, and a Web site.
   C-SPAN can be found on Channel 37 and C-SPAN2 on Channel 38 in Princeton.