If you are one of the many people who have cut the cable cord, you may have noticed it is now difficult to enjoy the cable industry’s greatest gift to our democracy: C-SPAN. Despite repeated pressure, the largest streaming alternatives to cable television, YouTube TV, Hulu, and Fubo, are all still refusing to carry the channels. C-SPAN is a volunteer gift to the public from corporate America, and we do not want to change that. But we do encourage the streaming services to rethink their decision for the good of the country.

The exact details of how the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, which was created by journalist Brian Lamb as a nonprofit organization in 1979, is funded are a trade secret, but essentially, each cable company pays a certain amount every year based on how many subscribers they have. C-SPAN first started with gavel-to-gavel coverage of the House of Representatives, then the Senate with C-SPAN2. Now it offers a wide range of public policy coverage and original programming both on C-SPAN3 and online.