Bob Rosencrans, one of the founding board members and earliest backers of C-SPAN, has died.
In 1977, Rosencrans, then president of UA-Columbia Cable, wrote a check for $25,000 to get the fledgling public service channel off the ground. “If it hadn’t been for Bob Rosencrans, there probably wouldn’t be a C-SPAN,” said the channel’s founder Brian Lamb, in a statement. “Bob helped me tremendously by explaining to a start-up cable industry that it made sense for a network like C-SPAN to have a place.”
With seed money from UA-Columbia and several other cable companies, on March 19, 1979, C-SPAN flickered to life, providing the first live video of the U.S. House of Representatives in action.
Rosencrans died earlier this week in Greenwich, CT. He was 89.”Bob was a tremendous human being,” Lamb added.