NPC in History - C-SPAN coverage of Club debuts with Volcker speech

Club President Art Wiese looks up at Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker shortly before Volcker made Club history on Jan. 3, 1980, by being the first speaker recorded by C-SPAN. Joe Slevin, who would be president in 1981, is in the middle. Photo: Stan Jennings

 

The recent death of Paul Volcker,  former chairman of the Federal Reserve, brought obituary accolades of his role in bringing inflation under control in the early 1980s.

But most of those obituaries missed the part Volcker played in a significant moment in National Press Club history, and he may not even have known that he did.

Volcker was the guest at a luncheon on Jan. 3, 1980.  As you can see from the photograph, Volcker was a big man, six foot seven.  If Club President Art Wiese of the Houston Post, who was no small guy, had to look up to him like the photograph here shows, you know Volcker was tall.

Before the speech, a freelance cameraman by the name of Forrest Boyd was busily setting up a camera in the back of the room. He was working at the behest of Brian Lamb, who just a few months earlier had launched C-SPAN, the cable news channel.

C-SPAN had been created by the cable industry to cover the House and the Senate from gavel to gavel, but Lamb said he wanted more. 

“It always was a dream of mine to be able to hear speeches in their entirety from start to finish,” he told the Club at his own luncheon on Jan. 7, 1997. “This is a fabulous forum to do that. It would be the first really different thing we do for the network.”  

But he said he didn’t have any money to do it. He had known Boyd for years, and Boyd agreed for $200 a Luncheon, he would set up a camera, tape the speech in its entirety, and hire a guy on a bicycle to pedal the tape to the C-SPAN offices then across the Potomac in Arlington, Va. Thus, C-SPAN coverage of Club Luncheons and other events was inaugurated.

“That’s how it started, and it’s the same premise now as it was then,” Lamb said in 1997.  “One camera in front of a speaker at this podium having a chance to say what they think and believe.”

C-SPAN has not missed a Luncheon since Mr. Volcker. Lamb figured that he was the 1,122nd Club luncheon speaker that C-SPAN covered.  And that was nearly 23 years ago.   

By broadcasting not only the Luncheons but many other events at the Club, C-SPAN puts it on the national media landscape practically daily. The two organizations have a mutual mission of educating the public in pursuit of democracy. And today practically every Luncheon is available to be seen online from C-SPAN’s archives.

This is another in a series provided by Club historian Gil Klein. Dig down anywhere in the Club’s 111-year history, and you will find some kind of significant event in the history of the world, the nation, Washington, journalism and the Club itself. These stories will be published as a book, “Tales from the National Press Club,” due out April 27, 2020.