December 1, 2008

CableFAX: 70. Hill People: Rob Kennedy and Susan Swain

Rob Kennedy and Susan Swain
Titles: Co-Presidents, C-SPAN
Last Year: #60
Ages: Old enough to vote
Education: U of Scranton, BA (Swain); U of Chicago, MBA (Kennedy)

Why Them? If you had a hankering to watch Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson explain the latest version of the bailout plan to a lame duck congressional committee late last month you could have watched it on C-SPAN, viewed it as a stream at cspan.org, listened to it on C-SPAN Radio on XM Satellite, or, if you were in the DC area, on WCSP FM. You can thank Swain, Kennedy and Brian Lamb for that (and of course your cable op for funding C-SPAN). Two of cable’s nicest, Swain, who’s also a host on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, and Kennedy, who oversees finance, technology and affiliate relations, are an exception to our rule of one exec per CFAX 100 slot. Since they share a title, have worked together for nearly 20 years and were promoted on the same day in ’06, we thought it was fair to co-locate them.

Our House: Later this month C-SPAN’s cameras will have unprecedented access to the White House for a special that Swain exec produced.

Musical Moment: If you had very good eyesight, you’d have seen Kennedy tickling the ivories with the TV Rejects at last spring’s Battle of the Bands during The Cable Show ’08. The event raised $300K for the city of New Orleans.

Year Ahead:
Politics isn’t going away, neither is C-SPAN, thank goodness.

SA

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