As a young producer at CNN in the 1990s, Sam Feist spent countless hours working on “Crossfire,” one of the first cable news shows to pit partisan pundits against one another. At lunch one day, the co-host Michael Kinsley mused about an alternative idea: “Ceasefire,” a program where Republicans and Democrats tried to find areas of agreement.
“It sat with me for, gosh, 20-something years,” Mr. Feist recalled.
Now Mr. Feist is the chief executive of C-SPAN, the low-key public affairs network beloved by political junkies. And “Ceasefire” is about to become a reality.
Envisioned as a respectful conversation between lawmakers from opposite sides of the aisle, “Ceasefire,” which is expected to debut in the fall, will be C-SPAN’s first new weekly program in two decades. “No shouting, no fighting, no acrimony,” Mr. Feist said in an interview. “Just two American political leaders with a willingness to find common ground.”
And where, pray tell, does he expect to find those?
Mr. Feist, a fixture of the Washington press corps who led CNN’s elections coverage for many years, acknowledged with a laugh that bipartisan relations in the nation’s capital were at a low ebb. That, he explained, is why a show like “Ceasefire” is sorely needed.
“The country rarely sees Republicans and Democrats engaged in a productive conversation,” he said. So for the past year, every time he has met with a member of Congress, Mr. Feist has pitched his idea for the show and asked the lawmaker who his or her best friend from the opposing party is.
“And you know what? Almost every one of them gave me a name,” he said. “Almost all of them said they would do it.”
A host — not yet chosen — will act as a facilitator of the discussion, but C-SPAN hopes that the lawmakers will take the lead.
“Ceasefire” is Mr. Feist’s first major programming move since he took over C-SPAN in September, after 35 years at CNN. He has set out to put a modern mark on a channel often known for rambling listener call-in shows and gavel-to-gavel coverage of the House and Senate.
A few cosmetic changes are in store. Mr. Feist ordered a subtle refresh of the channel’s cozy onscreen graphics, which are sometimes compared to public-access TV. (The white-on-blue logo will remain the same.) He also has plans for a picture-in-picture feature so viewers can monitor events on C-SPAN2 and C-SPAN3, sort of like sports networks that show multiple games at once.
C-SPAN is a nonprofit funded by the cable and satellite industry. As at other channels on traditional TV, changing viewer habits have posed problems.
Millions of cable subscribers have ditched cable altogether or switched to streaming services like YouTubeTV and Hulu, which do not carry C-SPAN. Once available in nearly 100 million households, C-SPAN now reaches roughly half that many. And because it relies heavily on fees paid by cable systems for revenue, the channel’s financial outlook has darkened.
Google, the owner of YouTubeTV, has so far declined to pay the fee to carry C-SPAN’s three stations — 87 cents a year per subscriber. Google told Vanity Fair this week that it could not “justify the increased cost to subscribers’ monthly bills.”
Besides its coverage of Congress, C-SPAN sends camera crews to record local forums, campaign-trail speeches and other news events on the national political calendar.
CNN canceled “Crossfire” in 2005, not long after a memorable episode in which Jon Stewart, the host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” confronted the co-hosts about the program’s adversarial format, saying it was “hurting America.”
So is “Ceasefire” Mr. Feist’s idea of penance?
“I don’t think of it that way,” he said. “I worked for a different organization. C-SPAN is very different than the cable news channels.” He added, “I’m not sure this program would work on CNN or Fox News or MSNBC. I don’t think it would be a good fit. And I don’t think another cable news channel could have the same credibility trying to bring this program on the air that C-SPAN does.”
Michael M. Grynbaum writes about the intersection of media, politics and culture. He has been a media correspondent at The Times since 2016.
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