VoterWatch has done an interesting analysis and enumeration of which hearings C-SPAN has broadcast and which it has not. It found that C-SPAN covered 28% of all committee hearings held during the week of February 4-10, 2008.

• C-SPAN Analysis: What Are We Missing?, by Billy Hallowell, VoterWatch, April 4, 2008.

  Hallowell notes that:

  Since our primary interest is in creating a video record of what occurs in House and Senate meetings, access to footage is paramount. Unfortunately (and as many of you know), our government doesn’t offer adequate access to video, audio, and transcripts, as the quality and availability of these items greatly differ among committees.

  Since C-SPAN is the main hub for Congressional footage, we decided to examine one week of network coverage to see exactly what the C-SPAN channels are covering—and what they’re not. While we are not attempting to fault C-SPAN for missing hearings (after all, covering all of the committees is an arduous and expensive task), we think it’s important to understand what we’re not seeing.

  Documents librarians will want to know that Bernadine E. Abbott Hoduski is on the Board of VoterWatch and FGI's own Shinjoung Yeo is on the Advisory Board.

C-SPAN has recently released a great new online resource with lots of potential:  the  C-SPAN Congressional Chronicle (currently in beta) is an index to the C-SPAN video recordings of the House and Senate floor proceedings. According to C-SPAN the video recordings are matched with the text of the Congressional Record as soon as it is available.  Each appearance has a video link where users can watch and listen to the actual remarks.  C-SPAN  hopes that this site will provide a useful tool for viewers and followers of Congress to research, watch, and review the actions of the Congress. They welcome  bloggers and websites to create links to various videorecordings and also welcome comments and suggestions for improving the service. 

C-SPAN issued a press release today, announcing:

...a liberalized copyright policy for current, future, and past coverage of any official events sponsored by Congress and any federal agency-- about half of all programming offered on the C-SPAN television networks--which will allow non-commercial copying, sharing, and posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution.

(The emphases are C-SPAN's own.)

You will find a bit of background about this development on National Journal's Beltway Blogroll posting.

The C-SPAN announcement is causing a stir in the blogosphere, where bloggers are wondering about the definition of "non-commercial" and whether it includes them.

Any FGI insight?