John Eggerton offered a preview of the show in Broadcasting & Cable yesterday.

That concept provided economic support for a broader diversity of programming than likely would have developed under a common carrier model.  If cable operators had been required to lease channels and capacity at a nondiscriminatory price to programmers, cable channels would have been filled with more of the most popular programming that would have garnered the largest subscriber fees (especially premium sports and movie channels) and fewer of the niche services that appealed to smaller audiences and could only expect to receive smaller fees from their viewers.

Under the cable “editorial discretion” model, however, operators had an interest in maximizing the value of their subscription service to the greatest number of customers.  This meant more than searching for and adding new channels that would increase the attractiveness of the cable package to those who already subscribed.  It also meant inducing others who had not been attracted by the news, sports, movie and entertainment channels that were already being provided.  Multiple sports channels might add value for hard-core sports fans, but the addition of children’s programming, cultural programming, history programming and science fiction, for example, might broaden the appeal and increase overall value to customers.

Moreover, there was a chicken-and-egg problem that needed to be overcome to foster and nurture the development of cable programming – a problem not suited to a common carrier solution.  Consumers in urban areas where broadcast signals were readily available over the air were unlikely to subscribe to cable television service until the system carried attractive non-broadcast programming.  But new networks were unlikely to incur the risks or have sufficient access to capital to invest in new program networks unless they had assurance of cable viewership.

That’s why, in the early days of satellite-delivered programming, cable operators themselves invested in many new programming networks that, in their view, were likely to attract additional viewers when added to the package of basic cable services.  They even created a noncommercial public affairs programming service that provides gavel-to-gavel coverage of both houses of Congress, along with other public affairs events and discussions.

Today the public takes C-SPAN for granted as playing a fundamental role in our democracy – a window on their government in session and in action.  But how would such a not-for-profit service been created, much less survived, if cable operators had been required to lease all their channels at nondiscriminatory rates and terms and were forbidden from exercising editorial discretion over the programming they provided?

Vertical integration and editorial discretion together were the solution that ensured that cable operators would have a product to sell – and that laid the foundation for the vast array of programming that ultimately has become the hallmark of cable television.  And, incidentally, that programming is, for the most part, no longer owned by cable operators.  To the contrary, once vertical integration succeeded in providing cable operators with a critical mass of non-broadcast programming, independent programming investment began to flourish as well – especially as cable operators vastly increased the channel capacity of their systems.

Meanwhile, many of the vertically integrated programming networks that provided the seed-bed for cable’s growth are no longer owned by cable operators.  As a result, today’s cable platform offers hundreds of channels of diverse programming – and the vast majority of that programming is not owned by any cable operator.

The economic model that enabled all of this to happen was put in place well before the courts made clear that cable operators were First Amendment speakers whose editorial control over the content they provided was protected speech.  At the time, policymakers made a choice not to dictate cable’s business model and preempt its editorial discretion by imposing a common carrier regulatory regime.  But it is the same choice that the First Amendment represents – a determination that the First Amendment rights of the media are congruent, and not at odds, with the interests of the public.  It’s a choice that recognizes that danger abounds – for a multitude of reasons – when the government seeks to shape the marketplace of speech to its liking.

In the next segment, we’ll look at how the Supreme Court has confirmed that cable operators have a First Amendment right to exercise editorial discretion.

Each week, C-SPAN broadcasts a show called The Communicators, which features half-hour interviews with the policy makers, opinion leaders and others who are shaping our digital future.

Making a return appearance on the program is NCTA’s President & CEO Kyle McSlarrow. According to this B&C article, he discusses the impact of the current financial crisis on the cable industry, the retransmission-consent “quiet period,” the FCC’s network management ruling, and more. He analyzes the possible telecom policy stances of both presidential candidates.

They’ve switched up the format a little and now include a guest moderator on the program. This week, it’s the Wall Street Journal‘s Amy Schatz.

The Communicators airs Saturday on C-SPAN at 6:30 p.m. ET and Monday on C-SPAN2 at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. ET. You can also subscribe to the show’s podcast.

But suppose you can’t see it tonight. Or maybe you want to watch it over again tomorrow. Well, good news for Comcast cable subscribers. The three presidential debates, and the vice presidential debate, will be available On Demand, the day after their original broadcast. C-SPAN, Comcast Media Center and TVN Entertainment are teaming up to make the debates available to viewers. [I stand corrected. Other cable operators are also carrying the debates on Video on Demand as well. Check your local system.]

Comcast has already made On Demand programming available from the Democratic and Republican conventions, major speeches from the candidates and Spanish language content.

You may recall an earlier post on C-SPAN’s Convention Hub, which provided online coverage of the two conventions. Now they’ve launched Debate Hub, a one-stop shop for embeddable video of the debates, coverage from the blogosphere and a variety of other tools for broadband subscribers.

Features include:

• Embeddable video of all debates in their entirety from the C-SPAN Video Library. Users can edit, share and post this video on their own websites.
• Interactive timelines that allow users to watch the debate or read the transcript question-by-question and candidate-by-candidate.
• Word trees that give visual representations of the language used by each candidate throughout the debates.
• Aggregated blog and Twitter coverage of the debates, enabling users to follow the latest online debate news and analysis.
• Debate Cam, providing live streaming video from multiple locations including the debate hall, media filing center, protest area and on-campus debate watch parties.

And while it has nothing to do with cable, I have to give a shout-out to Twitter’s new Election 2008 portal, which allows you see tweets flowing by in real time.

C-SPAN has been advertised as “Cable’s Gift to America,” since it was created by cable companies as a public service in 1979 (contrary to the mistaken belief by some that C-SPAN is the Government Channel). Over the last three decades, “the political network of record” has now grown to three public affairs television networks, a radio station (also available on XM), and a website — all provided for through the support of the cable industry.

(Let’s recall that, in most instances, your local cable company pays a carriage fee to the programmer in order to bring you your favorite channel. Cable programmers have dual revenue streams — carriage fees & advertising — which is one of the reasons that a la carte would be harmful to them.)

C-SPAN, like other cable programmers, has been moving into the digital arena. As we enter the Academy Awards seasons of politics, with the Democratic Convention starting on Monday and the Republican Convention following the week after, C-SPAN has unveiled the Convention Hub.

This pair of portals (one for Denver and one for Minneapolis) includes a variety of features:

• Real-time tracking of credentialed state and national political bloggers, aggregated on the websites, to enable users to follow the latest online convention news and analysis;
• Video clips from the network’s convention coverage, embeddable, to facilitate use by political bloggers and other convention watchers;
• Linkable access to the complete C-SPAN Video Library, allowing interested users to fully search all C-SPAN video content;
• Live coverage of C-SPAN television and radio networks;
• Blogger Tips and Online Convention Video Finder tools;
• Real-time feeds from Twitter users using the hash-tags #RNC08 and #DNC08

New Media Strategies (NMS), an Arlington-based online intelligence and marketing firm, was brought on to design proprietary software technology for Convention Hub. C-SPAN maintains editorial control.

All this is on top of C-SPAN’s usual excellent election coverage, which will begin each morning with Washington Journal at 7:00 AM (ET) and run through the closing of each day’s floor proceedings. In addition, C-SPAN 2 will bring you events like live coverage of the Republican Platform Meetings and Ron Paul’s Rally for the Republic.

C-SPAN has expanded its traditional television coverage with the technological approaches in order to attract new viewers. C-SPAN’s loosening of copyright restriction over the past few months (embeddable video is new for the conventions) is enabling bloggers to use C-SPAN content in creative ways and helps to expand C-SPAN’s core mission to educate and inform the American populace.

But it’s important to realize that all this coverage may be a gift, but it ain’t free. It costs money to run C-SPAN’s operations and the support of cable operators is a critical part of the network’s success. Despite some criticism (like this), it’s important to remember that C-SPAN is a business, not a government program. This NY Times story makes the case:

In May, C-Span said that it had for first time asserted its copyright against a video-clip site, ordering YouTube to take down copies of Stephen Colbert’s pointed speech in front of President Bush at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Clips of the speech had been viewed 2.7 million times on YouTube in the 48 hours before it was taken down.

“What I think a lot of people don’t understand — C-Span is a business, just like CNN is,” [C-SPAN Corporate Vice President & General Counsel Bruce] Collins said. “If we don’t have a revenue stream, we wouldn’t have six crews ready to cover Congressional hearings.”