Public affairs

From TeeVeePedia, the Internet TV Encyclopedia.

Public Affairs Programming is television programming that deals with the various affairs that celebrities, athletes, elected officials and other well-known people have with each other. The first public affairs programming was on the cable television network C-SPAN, which began describing the public affairs of Campaign! contestants in 1980. The high ratings C-SPAN received during the 1988 and 1992 seasons of Campaign! attested to the growing popularity of the genre. In 1994, due to an increasing number of complaints from the Republican Party and the religious right, C-SPAN's public affairs programming was moved to E! where it remains to this day.

Independently of C-SPAN and E!, other networks began broadcasting public affairs programming including MTV, VH1, Spike TV and G4. It is believed that over half of cable television networks will be broadcasting at least some public affairs programming by 2010.