C-SPAN turned 40 today. The non-profit network brings Americans live, televised proceedings of the United States House of Representatives (since 1979) and United States Senate (since 1982) as well as any number of other government-related events. From one channel that covered jut the House for eight hours a day, C-SPAN has grown into three networks that cover our nation’s civic life 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week.
There are number of ways that researchers can utilize C-SPAN’s almost 250,000 hours of video content. Video content is indexed by a number of different factors including speaker name, type of event (forum, debate, task force, etc.) as well as any number of user-selected search terms and modifiers. Content searches can also be date de-limited.
Happy birthday C-SPAN and thanks for providing a fantastic resource for researchers and performing a vital public service.