Brian Lamb

Brian Patrick Lamb (/læm/; born October 9, 1941) is an American journalist. He is the founder, executive chairman, and the now-retired CEO of C-SPAN, an American cable network that provides coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate as well as other public affairs events. In 2007, Lamb was awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush and received the National Humanities Medal the following year.

Prior to launching C-SPAN in 1979, Lamb held various communication roles including that of a telecommunications policy staffer for the White House and as the Washington bureau chief for Cablevision magazine. He also served as a commissioned officer in the United States Navy for four years. Lamb has conducted thousands of interviews, including those on C-SPAN's Booknotes and Q&A, where he was known for his unique interview style that focused on short, direct questions.

On October 9, 1941, Lamb was born in Lafayette, Indiana, and lived there until he was 22 years old. Growing up, he wanted to be an entertainer and spent time as a disc jockey and as a drummer in many local bands. Lamb showed an early interest in television and radio, starting his first radio job at WASK (AM)—a local station in Lafayette—at the age of 17. His job at the radio station gave him the opportunity to interview musicians including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, Count Basie, and The Kingston Trio while he was still in high school.

After graduating from Jefferson High School, Lamb attended Purdue University. There, he was a member of Phi Gamma Delta and graduated in 1963 with a Bachelor of Arts in speech. During his junior year at the college in 1961, he coordinated a television program titled Dance Date that was similar to Dick Clark's ABC series, American Bandstand.

Following his graduation, Lamb was accepted into the Navy's Officer Candidate School. Upon completion of his training, he served 18 months on the attack cargo ship USS Thuban, and then moved to the Pentagon where he served in the audio/visual office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. Lamb took up this role midway through the Vietnam War and, in addition to handling queries from radio and television networks, he attended press briefings with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.

In July 1967, following riots in Detroit, Lamb was sent there tasked with providing recordings of news conferences of Governor George W. Romney of Michigan for the White House Situation Room. He also served as a White House social aide to Lyndon B. Johnson, escorting Lady Bird Johnson down the aisle at the wedding of Chuck Robb and Lynda Johnson. He later recalled, "For five years after I got out of the Navy and went back part of the time to Indiana, the only thing I was known to have ever done in my life was to escort Mrs. Johnson down the aisle." Lamb spent a total of four years in the U.S. Navy and was a junior grade Lieutenant at the time he left. He later said that his time in the U.S. Navy was "probably the most important thing I’ve ever done".

In December 1967, following his Navy service, Lamb's interest in politics led him to interview for the role of personal aide to Richard Nixon during his campaign for the 1968 presidential election, but, instead, he chose to return to Indiana. In August 1968, after working at a local television station in Lafayette, he spent ten weeks working for a group called "United Citizens for Nixon–Agnew". Following the campaign, he worked as a reporter for UPI Audio and, in 1969, became press secretary for Senator Peter H. Dominick. Afterwards, Lamb became an assistant for media and congressional relations to Clay T. Whitehead, then the director of the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy.

After the White House, Lamb returned to journalism as the editor of a biweekly newsletter entitled, The Media Report. While editing The Media Report, he also became the Washington bureau chief of trade magazine Cablevision for four years, covering telecommunications issues. During this time, he developed his idea of creating a public affairs-oriented cable network.