C-Span founder and Lafayette native Brian Lamb at C-Span's offices in West Lafayette. (Steve Healey / The Star)

Brian Lamb in the video archives at C-Span's offices in West Lafayette. (Steve Healey / The Star)

Brian Lamb is the most famous name in broadcast journalism that most Americans have never heard of. He helped found C-SPAN -- the Washington-based Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network -- and has served as the company's chief executive officer since its beginning in 1979.

Lamb, a Purdue University graduate, was born in Lafayette and worked at several Indiana radio and TV stations early in his career, including hosting the "Dance Date" television program in Lafayette. Save for a few twists and turns in his career, the bookish, mild- mannered journalist might have been the next Dick Clark.

He also served as a public affairs officer in the Navy during the mid-1960s, including stints at the Lyndon Johnson White House and the Pentagon.

Lamb, 66, has hosted a variety of call-in and in-studio interview shows on the cable network over the years, including the popular "Booknotes," which featured interviews with contemporary nonfiction authors.

A new biography, "Founding Father: How C-SPAN's Brian Lamb Changed Politics in America," by Stephen E. Frantzich ($22.95, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers) is set to be released today, though it's already available online and in some bookstores. Lamb says he has not read an advance copy.

Lamb was in Indiana recently to inspect the C-SPAN archives, which are stored off-campus in West Lafayette.

How many interviews have you conducted?

I don't know. I can tell you that the one show I do all the time I will have done 1,000. I counted them the other day. I used to do a program called "Booknotes" and I did 801 of those. And then for the last 31/2 years I've done a program called "Q&A." I've never calculated how many other interviews I've done, because for the years I hosted the call-in show, there would be thousands there.

Have you had an ambition to work for a major network?

I actually have never been recruited, and I've never shown the slightest interest in being recruited. I wouldn't want to go to any other network now. I'm not as interested in going to commercial television as I am in offering choice. That's what got me into this personally, the ability not to have to watch three networks in New York City decide for me what was news . . .

How do you rate mass media?

I think the first thing people need to do, you ought to know where the mass media gets its money to do what it does, then you factor that in. Take the rose-colored glasses off. Stop listening to journalists tell you they are all things to all people and they're only interested in information. Some of them are, but if you look at the structure of what's going on in communications, they are businesses.

Have you ever been tempted to be a more likable journalist, more customer-friendly?

No, I've never had any desire to be popular. I don't want to be unpopular, but I've never had any desire to be popular. It goes back to my theme of money. If I had an agent or needed an agent, that changes everything. One of the first people in our business to have an agent was Walter Cronkite back in 1952. Sig Mickelson, who was the president of CBS News back then, told him he ought to get an agent because people were very interested when he began to anchor the convention. That started a process that I've never been involved in, and I don't want to be involved in. That's the part of the pro-cess that the American people do not see. Every single person that appears on commercial national television has an agent. That agent gets 15 to 20 percent of everything they make.

What do you like about America?

In some ways I like the theory of America more than the actuality of America. . . . It's the greed that's in our society that's not always satisfying. It's the constant interest in power and all that. They can't put governance on it. They want bigger and bigger houses and bigger boats and houses in different locations. It becomes a measure of your success. That part of living today I don't really like very much.

There are two things I like about the United States the most. One is what the Founding Fathers created, the structure, the system, the checks and balances. We have better checks and balances in our system than any place in the world. . . . And then the other part of what I like is that we, more than any other place in the world, accept everybody. Even though it looks like a struggle, even though there have been some real bumps in the road, even though equality hasn't been available to everybody for all that long, we accept more people than any other place I've heard about.

What's wrong with journalism today?

You get your interview with the president of the United States, and once you get it, do you hit hard? Do you hit soft? Do you want to come back? It's always, "What happens to me down the road?" I would rather listen to someone who never meets a president, somebody who never meets the people that they cover, judging what they're doing far away from it, not ever worrying about having to be at the next dinner party with them. That's the part that changes your head, how you approach the world of journalism.

Is the public debate in the current presidential campaign any good?

I'm personally frustrated with the debate. I don't think the public pays attention to nor is very interested in how Washington is spending their money. And that's always been for me the issue, not whether you're a Republican or Democrat, but how your money is spent, and once you've decided to spend your money, is it spent well? And the answer to that is no, no and no.

How did the C-SPAN archives end up in West Lafayette?

I came back here for a Purdue graduation. I think it was 1985 or 1986. And I called ahead to the political science department and asked if any of the professors would be interested in chatting about the possibility of creating a C-SPAN archive. And so we had a little meeting -- about six professors-- and there was one professor by the name of Robert Browning who was at the table, and he really took an interest in creating a C-SPAN archive. And his department head was a man named David Caputo who is long gone from Purdue, but David Caputo also was very interested in the concept.

What is kept here?

Every show that's ever been on C-SPAN since September of 1987. We have about 18,000 hours of tape that has not been processed before that because the archives started in September of '87, and it's all there in the back room, boxes and boxes of old tape. There's probably about 120,000 hours of C-SPAN that's sitting right here in this facility.

Who uses these archives?

It's going to change dramatically in the next 20 years from what it was in the last 20 years, because Robert Browning has developed a Web site that allows anyone sitting at their desk to call up anything that's been on this network. They're working back, digitalizing everything; they're at year 1998 and they're going backward, all the way to 1987. In two years it will be completed. You'll be able to sit at your desk and look at anything that the archives has in its facility...

Right now it's often used by documentarians, sometimes by Hollywood. Unfortunately, because of its location, at the moment it's rarely used by researchers. We sell everything we do here to the public, and 70 percent of the orders are for one program, one time. Thirty percent are for the programs that are very popular. Interestingly enough, one of the programs that are most popular over the years are funerals. Ronald Reagan's funeral was a big seller.

- Interview by Abe Aamidor / The Star