 The network operates independently, and neither the cable industry nor Congress has control of its programming content.Brian Lamb, C-SPAN's chairman and former chief executive officer, conceived C-SPAN in 1975 while working as the Washington, D.C. bureau chief of the cable industry trade magazine "Cablevision".It was a time of rapid growth in the number of cable television channels available in the United States, and Lamb envisioned a cable-industry financed nonprofit network for televising sessions of the U.S. Congress and other public affairs event and policy discussions.