Robert Rosencrans; helped start C-SPAN, cable systems . By Sam Roberts
New York Times . NEW YORK - Robert Rosencrans, a daring cable
television industry pioneer who was instrumental in creating C-SPAN,
the unfiltered network that faithfully covers government proceedings
and civic events, died Wednesday in Greenwich, Conn. He was 89. The
cause was complications of a stroke, his son Richard said. "There
probably wouldn't be a C-SPAN without him," Brian Lamb, the network's
founder and executive chairman, said in an interview. C-SPAN, a
private, nonprofit, industry-financed service, began as the
Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network in 1979, at a time when fewer
than 1 in 5 homes was wired for cable. Today it comprises several
television and radio channels and a web presence, offering a variety of
gavel-to-gavel coverage of Congress, presidential campaign events, and
other public affairs programming. After Lamb pitched the concept to
cable operators, Mr. Rosencrans wrote a $25,000 check on the spot and
persuaded other industry executives to pony up $450,000 in seed money.
He became C-SPAN's founding chairman. In addition to his work with
C-SPAN, his Columbia Cable Systems was credited with being the first
cable operator to install a satellite receiving station in 1975, to
deliver the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier championship fight from Manila to
its Florida subscribers. On Thursday, the National Cable
Telecommunications Association said Mr. Rosencrans's early cable
systems were "precursors to today's life-changing television and
Internet infrastructure. A native of New York City and a graduate of
Columbia University, Robert Morris Rosencrans had brief, unsatisfying
stints in retailing before a friend referred him to Box Office
Television. The project was hoping to help movie theaters compete with
television by offering closed-circuit programming, like live theater,
and Harlem Globetrotter basketball and Notre Dame football games. After
Box Office Television bought TelePrompTer in 1956 to expand its
closed-circuit programming, Mr. Rosencrans received a call from a cable
system operator in Casper, Wyo., who wanted to feed a boxing match to
his subscribers. "Cable system? he asked. "What's a cable system? A
quick study, he recruited other investors and, in 1961, began buying up
small-town systems; brokered the 1975 fight broadcast (which was
credited with persuading Time Inc. not to pull the plug on HBO);
approached Madison Square Garden to start MSG; helped organize, with
Kay Koplovitz, the USA Network, which was the first basic cable channel
distributed by satellite; offered Robert L. Johnson a few hours of
Friday-night satellite time, which became Black Entertainment
Television; and then answered Lamb's invitation to start C-SPAN. Mr.
Rosencrans, a political liberal, invested in C-SPAN with his Columbia
Cable partner, Kenneth S. Gunter, a conservative. In 1977, he said that
he saw the channel as a public service and a promotional opportunity.
"I was tired of knocking on congressmen's doors to explain what cable
television was," he recalled. "So if nothing else, I thought it would
put cable on the map in Washington.
