May 28, 2025, 3:30 p.m.
What’s the president watching at 3 in the morning? According to his own telling, he’s watching replays of congressional hearings on C-SPAN. The network, which for decades has brought viewers across the world an unfiltered view of government, is enjoying a renaissance of relevancy in recent years. Lawmakers across the aisle are tuning in, and, in response, the network is launching a new program aimed at toning down the partisan rhetoric. Premiering in the fall, CeaseFire will be a weekly show dedicated to “thoughtful dialogue between leaders who don’t always agree, but are willing to listen.” C-SPAN CEO Sam Feist sat down with Hotline Editor Kirk A. Bado to discuss CeaseFire, combating cable cutters, and the network’s role in covering Trump 2.0 This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What was the inspiration for the CeaseFire program?
I spent several decades at CNN and worked off and on at the program called Crossfire. It was an important program in that the viewers got where the two sides, in most cases Republicans and Democrats, fell. It was a smart debate, and it was an opportunity for Republicans to hear the Democratic perspective and Democrats to hear the Republican perspective. It was a raucous debate show, and what it did not do was seek common ground or compromise. When one of the longtime legendary hosts, Michael Kinsley, left Crossfire in the late '90s, he and I had lunch after that. One day he said, “Sam, I love Crossfire; Crossfire is great and and I've enjoyed every minute I've been involved in it, but one day, you should also think about a program called CeaseFire, where you actually try to to get Republicans and Democrats to see if there's some hope for an agreement.” That’s been in my mind for 20-something years.
Our mission at C-SPAN includes bringing American politics to the public on our three networks, but also part of our mission is to do that in the most nonpartisan way possible. The idea of a program where Republican and Democrat can listen to each other, hear each other out, and actually seek common ground really fits into C-SPAN’s mission rather well.
What format facilitates more conversation than fireworks?
We’re still working out the details on the format. At its core, it’s a program that has a single host unlike Crossfire, that will moderate a conversation that will usually be with two people. The notion is that the participants all understand that this is going to be a conversation with more listening than shouting, and seeking common ground. In other words, the idea is that as much as members of Congress or other political leaders may disagree, there's almost always something that they agree on, and that can be a building block for a real policy.
The idea is that we will seek agreement within the program to build out a possibility for finding common ground and exploring where that can lead us, whether that's a policy solution or simply an opportunity to show mutual respect and model good behavior for the country, because our Thanksgiving tables have descended into acrimony in much of the country, and we have an opportunity to actually show the country that Republicans and Democrats can get along and can have a respectful conversation.
Sam Feist (C-SPAN)
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Who is your ideal Democratic and Republican pairing? I imagine it’s not Jasmine Crockett and Nancy Mace.
There’s not a perfect pairing, because it’s frequently issue-specific. So there are times when [Sen.] Richard Blumenthal and [Sen.] Marsha Blackburn are the perfect pairing, because they came together, took off their jerseys to seek a compromise and a solution to the online harassment that was happening to teenagers and other people. As far apart as they may be politically, they worked extremely closely together over a couple of Congresses to bring together a real, important piece of legislation. That willingness to set aside their other political agendas, to work together on a particular project that was important to each of them, is an example of the kind of thing that happens in Washington that the public doesn't really understand or appreciate. I don't want to pigeonhole the program. It's going to differ from week to week, depending on what's in the news and what topic we're focused on.
A lot of programming, particularly in sports, is geared toward debate. Why was this more restrained format the framework for your first original ongoing series in years?
There is no shortage of political conversation full of fireworks, plenty of finger-pointing, cross talk, shouting, talking points, right? We see that every day on multiple channels. There is, to my knowledge, no national program on television that is similar to what we've described here with CeaseFire, where you have people from different parties who are joining a program for the purpose of having a smart, civil conversation that doesn't involve shouting, doesn't involve cross talk, doesn't involve argument, doesn't involve debate. The reason we're enthusiastic about it is because it's unique on American television.
One of the critiques of Crossfire from comedian Jon Stewart was that the show wasn’t advancing the ball of political discourse.
Right. The conversation Michael Kinsley and I had predated Jon Stewart by many years, and I think his critique of Crossfire and other other political programming that was on the air and continues to be on the air was not entirely wrong. I think there's a place for debate and there's a place for debate programs, and I think there's absolutely a place for the sharp-elbow conversations that we see on television. This is simply a different program, and I think there's absolutely a place for this in the political media landscape.
The programming is coming at a critical time in C-SPAN’s history. Cord cutting has put you in a tough financial position, and streamers aren’t including you in their bundles. How does CeaseFire fit into your growth strategy?
There’s no other program on American television that has a mission to find common ground and seek compromise, which I think is a positive thing. If television distributors that are growing rapidly, like YouTube TV and Hulu+ Live TV, don’t carry C-SPAN, then their customers won’t have access to CeaseFire, which is unfortunate because I think CeaseFire serves a public good. The interesting thing about those services that I mentioned is that it’s not really about cord cutting, because when you think about it, the cord that goes into most people’s homes is their internet cord from whoever their internet service provider is, and most of those internet service providers have some sort of video package.
So when people leave Xfinity for YouTube TV, they’re not really cutting the cord, they're just changing the video package. But the most relevant part to me is when they switch, almost every channel in the lineup stays the same except for C-SPAN. So those YouTube TV customers who switched their video packages had C-SPAN before they switched; then they lost it.
So we not only lose a household which might have two, four, five people in it that no longer has access to C-SPAN, but the tiny amount of revenue that is associated with each subscriber: 7.25 cents per month. That’s 87 cents a year for three channels—it’s the least expensive television network out there. But that 7.25 cents, when you have 9 or 10 million households like YouTube TV has, adds up to a significant amount of money that C-SPAN used to bring in as revenue. So when you switch, that 7.25 cents goes away, and you multiply that by 9 or 10 million households, that puts us in a very difficult position.
It’s a very unique situation you find yourself in.
We do not accept, nor have we ever asked, for government funding. We believe that the public-private partnership with television distributors who view C-SPAN as a part of their civic responsibility is an important piece of the puzzle for the viewing public. What C-SPAN does has never been replicated by any other service.
What’s the one thing you think the media is doing better covering Trump 2.0, and one thing the media is doing worse?
I don't fashion myself a media pundit. That’s not my strength. I much prefer the behind-the-scenes role. I will say that I know that this president has made himself available more than any other president, probably in our history, to reporters' questions. It's striking the frequency by which he takes questions. It’s something that C-SPAN, with our three channels—we have the real estate to take public events from the president or the Democratic leadership or Republican leadership in a way that others don't.
