The Trump administration is leveraging C-SPAN in its push for YouTube TV to include public relations channels for streaming video.
C-SPAN, a non-profit established by cable companies, aims to provide access to significant government events and legal proceedings, mainly at the federal level. With limited advertising opportunities, streaming services have generally shied away from including it. Still, C-SPAN insists it offers vital public services that enable viewers to access various broadcasts.
The homepage of C-SPAN currently links to a Washington Post op-ed by Karen Tumulty (which is behind a paywall):
C-SPAN is the sole network that covers events from beginning to end, avoiding the snippets that other networks tend to show, especially in the districts of council members.
Yet, as more individuals abandon traditional cable, C-SPAN is losing its audience. While it reached around 100 million households in 2013, it now only serves about 51 million. (There are roughly 69 million households subscribing to pay TV services.)
Many of those viewers have transitioned to live TV streaming platforms. Some, like DirectV Stream, carry C-SPAN, but the larger YouTube TV (owned by Google) and Hulu + Live TV (owned by Disney) do not.
Officials from the Trump White House shared Tumulty’s article on X, adding a positive note. This post was then reshared by the Trump White House Rapid Response 47 account.
President Trump is known to enjoy watching C-SPAN, as it is the only network that frequently replays his events, including meetings at the White House and campaign rallies.
Joel B. Pollack is a senior editor at Breitbart News; Breitbart News Sunday airs Sundays from 7 PM to 10 PM (4 PM to 7 PM). He authored Trump 2.0: The most dramatic “first 100 days” in presidential history, available on Amazon Kindle. He also wrote Trump’s Virtue: Lessons and Legacy of President Donald Trump, which is available on Audible. Pollack received the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter @joelpollak.
