When C-SPAN began satellite-transmitted telecasts of the U.S. House of Representaives in March 1979, three million cable homes were wired to receive its service. Weekdays, between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. live Congressional debates could be piped into the livingrooms of interested cable subscribers. Four C-SPAN employees labored on the project and when the House was dark, they typed up the text for video billboards that announced their next Congressional telecast.

Over the next eight years, C-SPAN grew dramatically. Today, 135 employees work for C-SPAN in fields as diverse as programming, marketing, accounting, and newsletter publication. C-SPAN is on the air 24 hours a day with two channels of public affairs programming. The core of C-SPAN's fare is still the U.S. House debates; C-SPAN II, created in 1986, offers live coverage of Senate debates.