and brandon roberts talks about low-income working families. "washington journal," live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> the c-span network provides coverage of politics, public affairs, nonfiction books and american history. it is all available to you on television, radio, online and on social media networking sites. we take c-span on the road with our digital bus and local content vehicle. it is washington your way. now available in more than 100 million homes. created by cable. >> next a look at the british television channel that's comparable to c-span. the bbc parliament channel

covers the house of commons, house of lords and other government branches. its website offers eight channels of video from legislative sessions and committee actions. to explain it all, we talk to peter; knowles, the controller of the bbc parliament channel. this is 35 minutes. >> what's the history of the bbc parliament channel? >> that's been a -- there's been a parliament channel for getting on to 20 years, explicitly modeled on c-span in its origins. it was origin family -- originally run by the cable companies. the cable companies didn't prosper in the u.k. as they did in the united states, and they dropped out so the bbc stepped in about 11 years ago and took it over as one of eight or nine

digital channels in the u.k. the bbc runs. >> in the beginning, who owned it and who controlled it? >> the cable companies owned it and controlled it. when it was set up, there were quite a number of fairly strict understandings with parliament as to how it was going to operate. most of those actually to some degree still apply to how we operate, because many of them make sense. >> was it originally sold to the bbc or did they just take it over? >> the analog cable license was handed over from the cable companies to the bbc. that since has become irrelevant because analog cable hardly exists in the u.k. anymore, the audience has transferred to satellite and digital terrestrial. >> how is the channel set up and who controls it? >> i'm in charge, it's pabt of bbc news so i'm part of the

management team that produces a great number of different programs and two different news channels, a core news channel and bbc parliament, and we were funded by the bbc license fees not funded by parliament at all. >> how many people work for you? >> it's shockingly small, 15 journalists, including two based in brussels, but what we are able to draw on is a great range of staff and journalism in the rest of the bbc. we'll take programs from the rest of the bbc, show them at a different or sometimes better time of day and we're part of a ereally big network. >> how much programming do you do? is it a 24-hour, seven-day-a week network? >> it is 24-7. in the night hours between midnight or 6:00 a.m., we'll rarely show anything new or original but the rest of the

time, 6:00 a.m. to midnight is originalout put, and on every day of the year. in the middle of summer and at christmas, we show best of programs, programs we think will bear repeat viewing and we're showing that when we're away on holiday. >> how many outside cameras do you own or take to events? >> the simplest event, a speech, we'll take one and work with that but we'll also bring three or four cameras, mix them at our laptop mixing desk for more complex events, for example, the formal meeting, the church of england, we cover it in a limited way, we'll take several cameras to that and run it as an outside broadcast. >> the parliament for the church of england? >> it passes laws, church law rather than state law but it is a parliament, her majesty the

queen has just opened it, and she attends it once every five years and we've chosen to give it some coverage because there are a lot of issues going through that with women priests, women bishops all sorts of issues in the relationship with rome which is of interest. >> how much control does the government have over the church? >> virtually none. there used to be a system whereby the prime minister put forward the name of the -- approved the name of archbishops but that's gone now, the church is effectively self-governing under the crown. >> are members of clergy, i know this is off our topic but are members of clergy also members of the house of lords? >> numplee bishops are members of the house of lords and full law-making power. it's an interesting dynamic to the possibility of house of

lords reform, which would be taking the church out of policy. at the moment, it's an accepted part though some people disagree with this. this establishment, that bishops should be part of the law making body. >> 21 years as a network, i assume -- did the parliamentary channel started in 1989 or when the parliament went on or was there a couple of years lag? >> i'm not sure. >> when did you come on? >> nine years ago. >> what were you doing before? >> running a major part of the newsroom and before that i was the news editor for bbc world. >> how long have you worked for the bbc? >> 25 years. >> can you describe how big the organization is, how much money it spends every year? >> it has more than 2 billion income, 2 billion pounds. >> which would be over $3 billion. >> yes.

and more than 20,000 staff. it runs a range of tv and radio networks in the u.k., a number of international networks. it's a big organization. it's in some areas in radio, it's quite dominant in the u.k., in television it's more contested for the audience. >> what is your relationship to bbc parol -- the bbc parliamentary channel to the members of the house of commons and house of lords, how much do they have to say about what you do? >> they have no formal role, we're so involved in their lives we'll always talk to them if they want to talk about what we're doing but that's never been a problem. we're regulated exactly the same as all the other networks, we're not regulated by parliament but by the regulatory body that deals with all the other networks. when we talk to them, it's not on the basis of us following their instructions.

>> so how restrictive does this government go when it comes to the media? in our country, as you know, we have something called the first amendment, do you have anything like that in great britain and how regulated do you feel? >> no there isn't an equivalent, but the freedom of information bill that's quite recent has changed the landscape dramatically in terms of the ability of journalists to find out difficult facts of public life and that's what led to the crisis for the members of parliament over expenses when their expenses were pored over and people were astonished to see what was going on. >> what about the regulatory agency and your -- do you have a contract with anybody? >> the principle -- principal means of regulation is through bbc trust, it's independent of the bbc, even though it's got

bbc in its title, and they -- i agree with them each year a contract in terms of hours the kind of output, in real detail, it might be the numb of hours of committee coverage, the number of hours of coverage of scottish parliament and we have to stick to them. and that's very -- a very prix pre-sice document, publicly available. that's the principal means by which we're governed. >> can you change every day what you're covering or do you have to go along with the contract? >> some of it is a given. normally we will always be -- we would always be covering the house of commons live and showing the house of lords the next day. i say always but, i mean, just last week, there was a day when the house of commons business was not especially interesting or important, the house of lords were debating the defense review

which has a dramatic impact on the defense of the u.k. and taking part were a lot of lords who had been former defense chiefs. i took the view that that was so much more important that that's what we should show live instead of the commons and i wrote to the commons to let them know that's what we were doing. so always it can be varied. and we got quite a bit of interest live from that. we choose which committees get cover. we commission the coverage of them out of 30 or 40 committees a week, we're filming six or seven. >> dud -- does your contract say x number of hearings or x hours? >> 10 hours a week as a minimum. i would like it to be more, i would like to find the air time for more because the committees are fascinating as they are in washington. we show them friday, saturday, and sunday evenings in the best shots -- slots we can, our prime time.

but the other commitments crowd around and that's about the number of hours so we developed a big website with a lot of -- eight video streams. that allows us to do much, much more coverage of the committees. >> i'll come back to that but go to the floor of the house of commons or house of lords, how many cameras in each chamber? >> eight in commons, six in the lords. >> who controls the cameras? >> an independent company controlling through parliament, not from us. the rules of coverage are supervised by a parliamentary official, not by me. >> one of the things you notice watching the house hoff commons or lords is that you have what's called reaction shots which you do not have in the house of representatives or the united states senate, somebody is standing up and talking, they will switch the picture to somebody that's listening. that's not allowed in the house or senate where the cameras are controlled by both the house and

senate staff. who sets that and how loose is it? >> well, it's -- i don't think the rules has changed in 20 years but the interpretation of the rules has changed by miles. and what we've always pressed for is access to listening shots which we're careful to describe as reaction shots. the house authorities have been happy to relax and relax so you can actually watch people listening. it sounds unimportant but why it matters, we -- the pictures are dead, you have no sense oaf -- sense of the atmosphere. it's one person reading out loud, could be to nobody, could be to anybody, you have to see the reaction. it's what you expect when you watch any kind of outside broadcast or debate. over time, that -- the house authorities here have realized

that actually, they'll get a better hearing if the people see what they're actually doing in a more realistic way. >> how long did it take for them to loosen it up? >> it's been loosened all the time the television has been committed. it probably didn't happen at all in the first few years but in the last 10 years or so, each year it's got a little bit better to the point now where it's -- it always feels like a normal outside broadcast, you're pretty much getting the shots you would want to see if you had free range. >> if a member of parliament -- and you have 646 members? we have 435, it's considerably larger. if one is upset about what they're seeing on the parliamentary channel, who can they call and complain to? >> they call me and get my direct line and ring me up. it actually happens incredibly rarely. people seem to accept the terms under which we work and accept

that we operate fairly and with good intent. >> so if someone doesn't like a shot, a photographic shot from the floor of either house of lords or house of commons, who do they complain to? >> they usually would come to me but to be honest, there have been mainly on our side of the argument wanting the rules to change and the rules to be operated in a more relaxed way and better access given because it's in their interest. they want to have their constituents see them. they don't want to look as though they're in a photo booth, a passport photo booth, they want to look like they're taking part in a proper debate. on the whole, they've been very encouraging for the continuing relaxation. >> we'll go back to the control thing. in our situation, c-span is not government and neither is the bbc, though you get your money from? >> from the public. if you own a television, or any receiving equipment that can get a television signal, you have to

pay a license every year of 140 pounds and that's what generates the income for the bbc. >> in our case that would be close to $300, $250 to $300, dependsing on the rate of exchange. is that per home or individual? >> per home. >> and again, if i'm an elected member of the parliament and i'm upset about a camera angle under the law who could they go to? in our case, if they want to change a camera angle in the house of representatives the speaker of the house can direct it to be done because they work directly for the speaker. here, can the speaker or a party leader call up and say, change that angle? >> i don't think it's ever happened. there may have been a case -- the only issues i could imagine arising is where, if somebody is caught in shot pulling faces or being really kind of -- having a private conversation which

wasn't meant to be seen but the coverage -- they're sensible about what they're doing. these issues don't really occur. there were lots of fears at first on the part of the m.p.'s as to how bad television would be for them and very strict rules at first. but actually, they can see, as we can see, that a more relaxed view of coverage works for the viewers and isn't going to do them any harm. we've also been helped in that the house of lords has always been pushing first for relaxation of the rules and they've been helpful because most things we've done that are different over time did first in the lords and the m.p.'s could see it wasn't a problem. >> does every session in the house of commons and in the house of lords find its way to the channel? >> yes, in full. >> why are you doing this? what's the interest to you in this compared to what you've done in the past? >> there's a real value in delivering these debates and the

hearings to the audience. it's a complementry activity to news journalism but we're not restricted to that. we're making a lot of editorial choices as well. to me, it's a small operation and i'm in charge of all aspects of it and that's great. as you can imagine in a big corporation to have a channel that's yours is a tremendous privilege, it really is. we make a lot of editorial choices about which events outside of parliament we cover and the questions about what you give prominence too, what do you put in prime time and which hearings do you cover? which parliaments do you cover? for example, the irish got a major budget debate coming up. it's possible i would love to have that live on bbc parliament. it probably will clash with the house hoff commons -- house of

commons but then i'll find a spot for it. it's funny around those kinds of issues. >> what do you know about your audience? >> we know quite a bit, we have two kinds of audiences. the audience at home we know about because our equivalent to the nielsen ratings is called bob. on that, we know we're reaching so far this year average 1.8 million. which is -- >> homes or people? >> that's people. that audience is an older audience, it tends to be over 50. and it's strongly -- it strongly tends to be male. it's people with -- watching in the daytime who have time available, maybe semiretired or retired, who care about politics, probably enough to go out and vote and it's a different offering to the rest of daytime television. what we don't know about is the

audience watching in offices, watching out of the home because that's not measured by anybody. that's probably younger, more professionals, probably much more evenly mixed male-female. >> where are you from in the united kingdom? >> i'm from lancashire. >> how far is that from here? >> near manchester, 200 miles to the northwest. >> what kind of family did you grow up in? >> we grew up in a family which was very late to get color television, my father didn't believe it would ever take off, it was only when my grandfather came to live with us that color television arrived. probably one of the last households in the u.k. to get digital television. so it's -- i don't think my family know a huge amount of what i do in this world. >> who's alive in your fam any

hi? mom and dad? >> yes, and they've recently moved from lancashire to a scottish island. >> so if you live on the scottish island or in bolton, how many choices do you have about where you get television in the home? >> the analog has been switched off around the country so more than 90% of people have digital television which is a choice of i'm not sure how many but probably 80 or more channels of which bbc parliament is one. >> is there a way to describe the difference between analog and digital television? >> it's a tech nick call distinction between wave form, analog uses wave form, digital is pumping it out in a bunch of digits. on digital television you can pump out a huge number of channels, analog you're restricted to four or five.

>> does the digital television with some 80 channels cost money to each ohm or is it free? >> it's free, but you have to buy a new box to receive it, they can be as cheap at 10 pounds or $15 in the supermarket. that's not a hurdle. >> other than the yearly bbc fee that someone pays in the home is there any other cost to television? >> no, none at all, unless you get satellite television, and there the subscription fees are much, much higher but you're getting exclusive sports rights and things like that. >> sky is owned by rupert murdoch? >> news corporation. right. >> how many channels would sky have? >> it's a great many. some of them are h.d. and bbc has an h.d. channel too. a lot of movie channels a lot of sports channels. >> do you have any idea what

percentage of brits take sky channel? >> i don't know the percentage numbers but it's quite substantial but what we're finding is that the audience to bbc parliament is coming from digital terrestrial maybe 2-1 over watching through satellite. so the proportions of watching by different means in this country keep changing. >> what happened to cable television in great britain? >> it struggled and it was expensive, very expensive to get launched, all the tree roots getting challenged in london when the cables were being put through. and i have cable at home but it's -- it's not the -- not the most commonly used format. >> are you on all those formats? >> yeah. >> do you have any idea of the total number of homes you go to? >> it will soon be all of them. we're probably at 90% of about 25 million households and as i

mentioned, 1.8 million average reached this year which is small but it's very good for a nearby channel. >> just to compare, 25 million homes in great britain, about 115 million to 118 million homes in the united states. 60 million people here, 310 million people in the united states. go back to your start in life in bolton, what kind of education did you need in order to do the 25 years at the bbc? >> well, i got work experience in a variety of different things, i worked in a news room and i thought this is wonderful. >> where? >> new castle in the north of england. i got my first job as a local reporter. also in the north of england straight off from that. then i joined the bbc as a trainee. >> what about your mom and dad? what did they do? >> my father also worked at the bbc as a journalist but his

working life was, his passion was for the union, that's where he put all his energy over his life and he still, he's a life member of the union. my mother is a teacher. >> if you're -- if you put your passion in a trade union, what does that mean here in this country? >> well, i wonder if it's so different from the states, perhaps -- >> in the states the unions have about, i think it's 12 million membership, something like that, i may be off some, out of a lot more. what's the membership in this country? >> i couldn't give you the numbers but it's high proportion of people working particularly in the public services much more so than in the private sector. unions are still important and powerful and you see in london in the next days and weeks quite a number of big demonstrations because of the cuts to public spending that are coming up.

>> where do journalists sit in respect in this society? in america they're way down on the bottom now, what about in this country? >> there's a very clear distinction in public service between what people think of newspaper journalism and broadcast journalism. broadcastists have a lot of trust on the -- broadcast journalists have a lot of trust, i'm not making any special claim for the bbc over commercial news rooms, but people buy in great numbers the more lurid newspapers but they don't necessarily believe what they read. >> go back to the bbc parliamentary channel, any advertising? >> no. >> do you have to have those ratings or do you just get them because you want them? >> i had to fight to get them,

people thought nobody would watch this, it was too nearby. there's no pressure on that. it would be ridiculous if there was. one of the most important things about our audience is it's driven by the level of interest in politics. in the end, i can't -- i'm not deciding the outcome of the next election. and the more interest in politic thirks more people are likely to come to this channel. >> you mentioned earlier the web, internet, and your multiple channels that you called democracy live. explain that. >> we'd been worried for quite some time that we were not able to properly reflect the democratic settlement in the u.k. we have two parliamentary chambers in westminster but also parliaments in scotland, assemblies in northern ireland and wales and we're vooved in the european parliament in brussels. we've got one tv channel and

c-span has three. we've dwooped website with eight video streams, allowing us to cover at the same time all those different chambers and it also gives the space for select committee hearings to be running at the same time. so across a single home page screen, you can begin to see the relationship that exists between all of these parliaments and assemblies and the first time that's been possible, it's quite a feat to have eight videos running in the same box on the same screen. the other thing we were anxious about is it's difficult to navigate your way around this material to know who said what about what, to find things, to -- really you have to be an expert researcher to be able to find your way. so the democracy live has an incredible clever search mechanism which will take you to the exact moment in the video where somebody has spoken a word

in a debate in any of these chambers and it's a rolling archive, we're not going to ditch stuff after one week or two weeks. that's so valuable. i do know that a lot of people are using that and finding it's changed the way they work. >> can people in the united states get on this website? >> it's available everywhere. >> what's the address? >> bbc.co.uk/democracylive. >> so bbc.co.uk/democracylive. you mentioned the scottish parliament, northern ireland parliament is that what they call it? >> assembly. >> the wales assembly. and what about the different hearings and all and the lords and the commons, there are eight choices at any time, just click on a screen? >> it's only rarely that all eight will be live.

when one of those changes is not -- chambers is not in session, we'll have chosen a hearing or a debate or statement that is of importance that's immediately available on demand, but there are times when all eight are up and it's great. >> how do you do that and is that your responsibility? >> yeah, it comes to me but we've got teams in scotland, northern ireland and wales and they're driving that part of the site because they've got all the local knowledge. >> do they work directly for you or the bbc? >> for the bbc in those places but under our umbrella. >> is there a requirement under the law in scotland and wales and places in on ireland where the bbc must televise what's going on there? >> no. >> why do they do it then? >> we do it because these parliaments are quite powe