Inside the fight to keep your new favorite political show on air

• After covering the House speaker drama, C-SPAN says it's time for their cameras to have greater access.
• The network requested that Kevin McCarthy allow C-SPAN to cover more House floor proceedings.

Comedians have long poked fun at C-SPAN's "handful" of viewers and the network played along, even creating a compilation video of their jokes.

But the cable and satellite television network is no joke, journalistically, and proved its value to the country last week when it was allowed to bring its own cameras into the House chamber instead of using the government-controlled cameras that are restricted to showing the speaker on the floor and wide-angle shots.

The not-for-profit public affairs network provided rare footage from different angles of the chaotic series of votes that led to Kevin McCarthy becoming House speaker, giving viewers a fascinating, behind-the-scenes show.

At least one comedian took notice.

"This is the best season of cspan…ever," tweeted Jon Stewart on January 4.

Now C-SPAN says it's time for their cameras to have greater access to the House chamber. The network's co-CEO Susan Swain, in a letter Tuesday, asked House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to allow C-SPAN to cover House floor proceedings on behalf of their network and all Congressionally-accredited news organizations.

The C-SPAN request came after Rep. Matt Gaetz — a breakout star of last week's House speaker C-SPAN show — introduced an amendment to House rules to allow C-SPAN cameras on the floor during regular proceedings.

A spokesperson for McCarthy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Most of the time, when people are seeing the House in action on C-SPAN, they're watching the government-operated video feed that works under strict guidelines, Ben O'Connell, a producer for Politics in C-SPAN, told Insider. They can only show the speaker on the floor and wide shots.

"They can't pan around, they can't show reaction shots, they can't show members speaking with one another in the aisles or the back of the chamber," he said.

Independent media cameras are only allowed in the chamber on special occasions, such as a state of the union address, joint sessions of Congress, and the House speaker's election, he said.

During the House speaker's vote, C-SPAN had three manned cameras on tripods in galleries, a level up from the House floor, capturing the action in a way that the House Recording Studio isn't allowed to do, O'Connell said. Then C-SPAN makes its video available to all of the other networks on Capitol Hill.

Greater access for C-SPAN cameras would allow the network to show Americans "their legislators at work," O'Connell said.

"Getting up in and giving a speech on the floor is only part of their job," he said. "A lot of the conversations that are happening in that chamber aren't happening in front of microphones."

C-SPAN crews are on Capitol Hill ever day when Congress is in session, working in the briefing and hearing rooms.

"They know these members," O'Connell said. "They know the stories because they have to in order to do their jobs well and so they're uniquely suited to follow the action within the House chamber on those rare occasions that we are allowed in."

In her letter, Swain noted that there has been "little change in the strict rules" for video coverage of floor proceedings. The public, press, and House member's reaction to C-SPAN's coverage of the the House speaker votes last week "along with the 'transparency' themes in your new rules package — have encouraged us to resubmit a request we have made to your predecessors without success," she wrote.

She asked to install a few additional cameras in the House chamber to create a "second journalistic product," in addition to the House Recording System. If ongoing coverage is not acceptable, she requested McCarthy permit C-SPAN and other independent journalists to cover key legislative sessions.

Video produced by House Recording Studio government employees, she wrote, "lacks the transparency that C-SPAN, as a journalistic institution is able to provide."